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PASSION 

A HUMAN STORY 


BY 

SHAW DESMOND 


NEW YORK 

CHARLES SCRIBNER’S 

1920 

(V|a^ cL> 


SONS 



Copyright, 1920, by 
CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS 


Published April, 192i 


APR k9 i^U ' 


l 


©CI.A58G786 


TO THE CHILDREN OF THE NEW AGE 


CONTENTS 


PART I 

THE CHILD 

CHAPTSft PAGE 

I Space and Dimension ...... 3 

II The Shadow 9 

III The Idea of God 18 

IV The Gift of the Gods 32 

V The Copper Halfpenny 39 

VI Love and Death 52 

VII “For the Sons of Gentlemen” ... 59 

• PART II 

FEAR STREET 

VIII London 75 

IX Big Business > L . . . 79 

X The Cave > . 89 

XI £: S: D: 95 

XII Alone 106 

XIII Fear Street 117 

XIV Miss Ella 132 

XV Captains of Industry 142 

XVI Little Business 150 

XVII Society 165 

vii 


CONTENTS 


viii 

CHAPTER PAGE 

XVIII The Old Lady of the Curls . . . 177 

XIX Damp Earth and Moonlight . . . 186 

XX Squid 196 

XXI The Grand Mogul . . . . . .212 

XXII Little Albert 225 

XXIII The House in Dragon Square . . 239 

XXIV The Blinded God 255 

XXV The Big Idea 266 

XXVI Phantasmagoria 277 

XXVII The Man with the Spade Beard . 287 

PART III 
THE WOMAN 

XXVIII Aase Wilde ....... . 301 

XXIX The Philosophy of Power . . . 307 

XXX The Copper Man . . . . .321 

XXXI The Hem of His Garment . . . 330 

XXXII Big Game 337 

XXXIII The Cry in the Night .... 344 

XXXIV I Make a Fool of Myself . . . .356 

XXXV Creation 364 

XXXVI The Man on the Scaffold . . .371 

XXXVII The High Mountain 379 

XXXVIII The Woman ....... 388 

XXXIX The Child a ^ A . . 395 


» 


I 









PART I 


THE CHILD 






X 








' 






1 






















ti-: * 









I 


SPACE AND DIMENSION 

My father and mother had been married many years 
before I appeared, and when the town had given up 
hope. My eyes opened upon the grey stone walls of 
my home — upon the rushing tide under the bridge — 
and upon the purples and greens of Creugh-ma-Geown 
whose swelling shoulders ran off into the grey skies 
behind him. For Creugh-ma-Geown was a living 
thing; and these things wove themselves into my 
fledgling mind until I had created my immutable 
world about me. 

It is not of my mother I think at the beginning, but 
of my grandmother, for it is always our grandmothers 
who are nearest to us in those first days. The little 
kindly wrinkled woman with the eyes moist and grey 
as the Irish skies above us. I feel myself again mak- 
ing my pringling teeth meet in her blue-veined hand 
when they grew the first time — or was it when they 
came again? She, like the walls, the green waters, 
and the mountains, was immutable: she was eternal. 
I bit her hands because even then I was a fierce, green- 
eyed, angry baby, long and lean and bony, with a pas- 
sion for biting developing itself in me. Yet it was not 
biting for biting's sake, but the satisfaction of some- 
thing deeper, more immanent . . . the same kind of 
thing which later made me bite my nails raw red and 
3 


4 PASSION 

impelled me to those other things of which I shall 
speak. 

What I remember of my mother in those early days 
is a being whose face I cannot recall, whom I loved 
fiercely and hated fiercely. My father was just 
whisker and unapproachably sweet: but my mother 
was “my mother.” She told me to love her, that it 
was my duty, and I did so; but there was something 
else too — the unity of mother and son, the subtlest 
oneness in the world. The child lies under the 
mother’s heart — that that child lies inside that mother 
is not accident but by the grace of God. 

My ideas of time, space, dimension, and locality, 
were those of another world and another being — they 
also were eternal, unchangeable. (Perhaps it is so with 
all young children.) I seemed to be emerging from 
a shadow-world of which the memories were not un- 
fresh, yet for me there was no future and no past. 
Time was yesterday, to-day, and for ever. It had 
never been, but now it was ticking itself out there like 
the beat of a giant clock into my soul as a definite 
entity, marked out into its seconds, minutes, hours. I 
seemed to remember another life before ; found myself 
looking at places I had seen before, hearing voices — 
sometimes, more seldom, seeing faces. Though these 
things never concretely — half-seeing and hearing them 
as earth-things ; half sensing them as echoes of some- 
thing that had gone before. 

I ask myself: had I really seen that little girl peep 
at me from the blank stretch of the long grey wall as 
though she had looked from the stones themselves — 
the little girl with the quick onyx eyes and the black 
straight hair fringing her forehead? And before that, 
did my aunt Penelope take me in her arms before I 


SPACE AND DIMENSION 


5 


could walk or speak, lifting me up on the long blank 
of station-platform — the lady with the grey-white 
curls that came to her shoulders, who was swathed in 
old muslin? Was it my aunt? Yet they tell me she 
never wore those curls. But there was the scent of 
the lavender from the softness of her gown. And I 
ask myself? 

But these memories gradually ceased as I grew older 
and the concrete clamped itself about my fluttering 
mind. 

The cosmos at least was very definite to me. “Over 
the hills and far away” led outwards, into memory- 
land, over the far rosy spurs of the Creugh-ma-Geown, 
and only over those spurs. The mere saying of the 
words filled me with vague, unutterable longings for 
something very dear — a country perhaps which I had 
left behind me for ever. And there was a pink soap 
baby that was to me a sort of mystical being of which 
I had once known the scent, conjuring to me sunsets in 
some place — in that place — of long ago. 

I compassed the sky. Behind that was heaven with 
a clearly-defined geography of its own — celestial but 
geography — and with God like the picture on the 
stairs. I could see the cherubim and seraphim ranged 
orderly, with trumpets and wings complete . . . and 
the Throne. But outside heaven I could not then con- 
ceive space. 

It was, however, whilst I was still in immaturity, 
not long out of tartan frocks, that the Cosmos began 
to take form — even then I had the cosmic mind — 
cloudy but all-attempting and all-pervading — leading 
to that later period when it had separated from the 
dreadful void itself; when I saw the earth spinning 
in space, the planets spinning, the stars gleaming cold- 


6 


PASSION 


ly, fixed and immutable, in the outer spaces — but be- 
yond all these more immediately cosmic things there 
were the uttermost voids, the deeps of blackness, where 
my mind stood naked, cold and fearing in the im- 
mensity of spacelessness -itself . I know that not so 
many beats of the great clock afterwards it was my 
fearsome pleasure to project myself to the other plan- 
ets, and to Saturn in particular, which I always con- 
ceived as the looming leaden icy ball of desolate hori- 
zons (I knew the Saturnine landscape as well as that 
of the earth on which I lived) — afterwards venturing 
to those fixed stars; farther, ever farther, till I had 
reached the outermost of the cosmos — but there al- 
ways came the moment, which I dreaded, when I stood 
pioneering on the extremest spur of the last star-speck, 
from where I peered into spacelessness — from which I 
recoiled, rushing backwards through the suns and star- 
swarms to the earth, earthy and sure, but not my home. 

My mind in this early time was virgin ; ductile ; ex- 
pansive; fluid to the impress of the Power Behind. 
Why did it change? Why should sclerosis infiltrate 
the soul-arteries as Time, the silter, the cramper, the 
definer, does his work? I only know that in that 
period I was of the stuff of which the gods are made 
— of the star-dust. I was unleashed to convention and 
its step-mother tradition. From that moment I con- 
tracted with my developing. 

I do not say these things ever really left me — they 
came back in the years that followed, sometimes, but 
their imprint grew fainter. It was as though having 
left my home between the stars, I forgot the winding 
starry paths. 

As my mind, still short-f rocked, contracted to the 
things about me, dimension became measured to my 


SPACE AND DIMENSION 7 

father’s height and to Creugh-ma-Geown — by nothing 
else. There was the sea later, but that was “space” 
rather than dimension. And it was now and in the 
immediately following years that locality began to 
show itself intense. The ships I saw haltered in the 
half-moon of the grey-stone quay, I believed in — they 
were part of the picture — but I could never see them 
sail away. I simply did not believe it. The ships I 
sometimes saw moving slowly out across the surface 
of the tideway were other ships. 

The Old Graveyard, which stood a mile outside the 
town, seemed to me then at the end of nowhere, and 
if my mother proposed to “go the round,” a couple of 
miles, I felt in despair. “The Gap-by-the-Sea” repre- 
sented the limit of immature legs and thoughts — that 
break in the interminable grey-lichened wall that 
wound along the sea, which opened on to the mossy- 
green knoll that hung over the grey mud tide-scour. 

Yet locality and distance did not altogether depend 
upon “distance.” They depended upon something 
else, something intangible, which in the years after 
made me despise mathematics as indexes to certainty. 
Many times have I crossed with fearsomeness and 
after much thought a one-inch crack in the landing of 
a stone stairs in one of our outhouses. I knew I could 
not fall down the crack. I knew it was but an inch, 
but I feared it. 

Inside the high stone walls of my home upon which 
the dusky wallflowers grew, those walls which banned 
us from all things but the mastheads of the ships un-. 
der them, there was “The Twisty-Turning.” It was 
a winding narrow barren walk, a darkened garden 
'where nothing grew but the flowery blooms of the old 


8 


PASSION 


lilac which scented the April airs from the sea. That 
tree to me lay at the back of beyond — almost inac- 
cessible. It was not that I feared the darkened walk 
— not that, only the distance-idea, the remoteness. 

There is no such thing as distance — length, breadth, 
space. Thinking only makes these things. 

Perhaps evolution itself is a question of “locality, ” 
of irrtagination. Perhaps as man progresses to the 
god, the stars become his localities, the universe his 
home. 


fl 


THE SHADOW 

I could not have been more than four years old when 
sex threw its golden shadow over me. It is shameful 
and a little pitiful that the coming should have been 
ugly. 

I know I was still in petticoats — we wear them 
longer in Ireland — for I can see the brown of my 
knees where they peered between the stocking and the 
hem as I balanced myself on the hard, shiny, horsehair 
sofa. 

It is the servant who gives the first moulding to the 
young child. It is one of the traditional lies that it is 
the hands of the father and mother, and especially the 
mother, which most nearly mould the child-clay and 
awaken the channels of its consciousness. Yet, pas- 
sion, sex, call it what you will, is the channel of con- 
sciousness for the child, and it is this channel which 
the mother and father never touch — it is the thing 
which is taboo between them and it. And yet the 
servant, who is the Strange Woman, the first thing 
outside the mother into which the child-mind peers 
uncertain, fearful, fascinated, is allowed to put her 
clumsy guilty-innocent hand upon the chord of life — 
awaken it — send the life streaming along it. That 
thing which the mother should reveal — that delicate, 
dangerous secret — is profaned by idle gnarled hands, 
9 


10 PASSION 

stimulating it to premature abortion and to the dead 
things. 

And here were these beings, with tremendous pow- 
ers of life and death and awakening thrust upon them, 
whom I was permitted, even invited, to treat with the 
contempt of mastership. They were things of coarser 
fibre — cattle of which the very sweat-scent marked 
them down. 

We had a girl, a girl who dressed in sky-blue on 
Sundays, whose pig-eyes struck upwards across the 
dead-white of a face limned by the smooth dead-black 
hair above, swinishly convex, but not uncomely. She 
was a good girl, as girls go. 

This girl could not get up in the morning, which 
irritated my mother, who, generally speaking, was not 
evil to her servants, and she would ask me to awaken 
her. I would crawl along the corridor leading to her 
room, with a sponge of cold water in my hand. I 
would crawl in, fearing to find her awake, my ten-year 
heart tumultuously beating; find her asleep and un- 
lovely on her back, snoring piggishly through that 
pointed, parted mouth — and then I would smash the 
sponge of water full on her open lips. I was enraged 
at her oversleeping herself. But there was something 
else underneath. The delight of striking a sleeping 
woman. And in that moment I would hark back to 
something dark which had happened — somewhere else 
— not once but often. But how and when and where? 
I could never find the track of this thing. 

What was the thing that drove inside me? Was it 
the same thing which made me strike down another 
servant, cleanly, with the iron-shod heel of the boot 
she had refused to polish — bring her down with fierce, 
conscienceless joy? What was it? 


THE SHADOW 


11 


You would think me an unlovable child — a sort of 
monster, but I can say that I was neither monstrous 
nor unlovable and that either of these women would 
have done anything for me and that they loved me in 
their own way. I was brutal — but I hated brutality. 
I was conscienceless — but with a vivid conscience. I 
hated — but I had a power to desperate singlehearted 
love. I had a fine sense of justice, the passionate sense 
of justice of the child, which would drive me both to 
brutality and to lovelessness in its upholding. Even 
in those early days, despite the cramping of my mid- 
dle-class parents, I loved everything — from the very 
women I had struck at and injured down to anything 
that crept or flew or swam. 

But I had curiosity — a searing, inpricking curious- 
ness about all things. Under this deadening, blighting 
thing, I one day tore the wings from a fly . . . and 
then was filled with a white dread of the wingless thing 
from which I ran away, returning to crush it fran- 
tically — bringing back those other darker memories. 
I even once essayed putting some flies in a bottle with 
a spider, explaining to myself, like any grown-up, that 
I was experimenting in the interests of science, and 
that anyhow flies were the natural food of spiders 
. . . but that did not prevent my running from the 
thing as though it had been a house of death and pain. 
And all these things, in some way, were enmeshed with 
the sponge on the sleeping girl and that night on the 
sofa. It was dark, cold, shiny-black — slippery with 
cruelty. 

And yet I was the same boy who could not thread 
a worm on the hook for fishing without going sick 
with disgustful sorrow for the wriggling thing . . . 
but I could see a salmon hooked in the brown waters 


12 


PASSION 


of the Cruiskeen Lawn without a quiver. But I was 
never indifferent, not indifferent to a blade of grass. 
I was one with all things about me. I thought of all 
things living, from growing grass to human being, as 
one with me. Or rather they were me — that was 
something unchangeable, something one did not think 
about. I had the fine democracy of the child. 

But this democracy of love and pain held the 
poignancy of all things that are felt vitally — the 
poignancy of passion. As a boy I had loves and hates 
amongst the flowers, the walls, even amongst the 
rooms of our house. I believed the very stones lived. 

There were the grey stones that mothered me — the 
grey stones of our walls, darkened and intimate — and 
those grey walls by the sea upon which I walked and 
which were as immutable as my parents, but more 
friendly. The piece of ancient masonry deep set in 
the whitethorn hedge, sprouting tongue - fern and 
maidenhair and lichens all alive in the stone and the 
stone in them. And the stone at the foot of the ash 
at the corner of the Hollow Road where I always sat 
as a religious duty because it looked friendly. And, 
closest of all, as all sea-things were, those loving gray- 
green stones which fringed the shore under the moun- 
tains. Their greys and purples and greens were me. 
Even that tilted tomb in the churchyard on which time 
had smoothed the inscription and where I laid my 
offering of wild flowers each Sunday in a crevice un- 
der the lid where the mortar had crumbled — not to 
any departed spirit of occupant as I remember very 
well, but to the grey stone tomb itself. 

I could never hate the stones, for I was part of 
them — the love I had for them was more elemental 


THE SHADOW 13 

though less personal than that for the flowers, which 
I hated as well as loved. 

There was a time-worn corner where the white 
violets grew — a stony, moist corner which was to me 
of the more intimate things. And near them the fox- 
gloves — white and speckled — the white fellows were 
aristocrats but the speckled were my own. Of all flow- 
ers, the speckled foxglove brought something up in 
me. I never could then see, nor indeed can I see now, 
a speckled foxglove without a catch at the heart — the 
remembrance, the ghost of things of a long dead past 
— of things real-ly un-real — of the things of the Un- 
derworld which haunt — no, with whom I used to 
haunt — the glades and the dells where the foxgloves 
grew. 

The dragon flowers, oxblooded velvety-throated fel- 
lows — regular gorgons, were bloodthirsty but friendly. 
I felt I had known them under other guises. The 
wallflowers, with another sort of velvetiness, like the 
bosoms of all the mothers of the world. The lilacs, 
the scent of all the springtimes, with something elat- 
ing, and yet something of sadness in them for all their 
freshness. But the Maids of Honour irritated me; 
there was something pretentious about them; some- 
thing of my mother — and I detested all yellow flowers. 
I disliked nasturtiums and marigolds in particular — 
they were vulgar and soup-scented. White and clove 
pinks brought back to me older memories of something 
— as of other gardens where I had walked in other 
days — and I loved them, as I did the black moss roses 
that grew in the moist darkness under the grey walls 
against which they padded themselves. 

But these loves and hates were not confined to the 
stones and the flowers. I hated persons — hated them 


14 


PASSION 


with a hate which was overmastering and entirely fixed 
— hated as the gods hate, for immutable reasons set 
down in the Book of Life and Death. 

I hated the boy in the patent shoes — Victor Vin- 
cent. I hated Baby Beresford for the neck-lump 
which blobbed itself over his collar behind. (I always 
associated certain physical with certain mental de- 
fects.) I hated Rody Mooney with the little eyes and 
tubby body. I hated Johnny Walsh and Harry Gil- 
bert because they had once made my father, who was 
a very sober man, drunk. (The name Gilbert I still 
hate and associate it with cruelty and cold jesting and 
cutting spade beards, with something of the Spaniard 
in them.) I hated Rachael Penrose because her eye 
was equivocal and twisted, though I loved Dinah 
Renan for the same twisted eye because it was of a 
kindly turn. I hated Mrs. Roderick the rector's wife 
because of her bat-ears, and because of something 
froggish about her face — something of the toad rather 
than the frog. 

But there were fears also. The fears of little acid 
Rae, the lawyer — as of the legless, quiff ed soldier on 
the little tray runabout because I hated and feared 
mutilation, which to me was mental as much as 
physical, though I had nice distinctions about this 
thing and patronized with the strength of the truly 
strong the poor aristocratic cripple Devonshire Love- 
lace Hook Fricker for instance, the son of another 
lawyer, who had a splay hip. 

I had a bloody fear of another soldier, of old 
O'Donnell, who was caretaker of the police barracks, 
whom I regarded as a sort of land pirate, returned 
from dare-devil; buccaneering work in India, in whose 
wall-eye, that flickered like sheet - lightning, there 


THE SHADOW 


15 


lurked all the squinting bedevilment of the tropics. 
And I hated and feared old Penrose because he sneered 
at my father’s rent-collecting — but him, as my fear 
lost itself in the envenomed anger of injustice, I abused 
brutally about his squint-eyed daughter ; a fatal thrust, 
for Rachael Penrose was very beautiful but because 
of her eye was gradually being left on the shelf. 

There was, however, Mrs. Hinton, whom I liked 
and feared together — liked because she was pallish to 
me with the good-natured pallishness of the alcoholist, 
but feared because even at ten I feared alcohol more 
than the devil himself. This also held good for Sarah 
O’Sullivan, whom I liked personally, but disliked upon 
principle because she chaffed me about my immaturity 
and supposed flirtations, and even in that early day I 
hated any reference to love-things. There was some- 
thing biblical about this tall swinging girl with the deli- 
cately hooked Jewish nose and smoothed braided hair 
— I confused her with the original Sarah and some- 
times saw her in my mind’s eye and to my extreme 
confusion with her clothes off like her prototype. 

I liked Rosie Brennan when she did not wear a hat 
that I disliked — her sister, black-eyed, murdering (I 
always called her “The Murderer”) Clara I hated. 
Then there was that black-eyed grown-up girl in the 
Main Street who pretended to want to kiss me, also in 
the same mixed category of liking and fear. And I 
liked Tommy Dee, the little twinkling pot-bellied 
butcher with the face of one of his sucking pigs, and 
feared Larry the Wolf — the man with the long fanged 
jowl and vulpine smile. And I hated the bull face of 
Father Dumphy — but that was more theological than 
personal, and loved the Reverend John Roderick, the 
crookedest, sweetest man in Ireland 


16 


PASSION 


These things are fundamental. 

And whilst these fires of love and hate, urgent, in- 
dwelling, were doing their work; whilst this in-burn- 
ing was cleansing and forming me in nature's way, 
my father and mother, who with progenital blindness 
knew nothing of these things, would not let me alone 
to my work. They wanted to teach me their lessons 
of love and hate — to “form” me ... me who even 
then was unformable by anything outside — and they, 
who were chaotic, “without form and void.” 

Even thus young I was taught my duty to my caste. 
The “class-war” had begun for me. My mother, who 
could not forget the aristocratic beginnings of her 
family (there had been an admixture of grocer since, 
it appeared), and my father, in the middle-class, semi- 
professional trappings of estate-agency ship, taught me 
to order myself proudly and stiffneckedly before my 
inferiors — as my mother taught those of them who 
were not cursed by the democracy of Catholicism and 
who fell into her clutches on Sundays, “to order them- 
selves lowly and reverently before their betters.” I 
was educated as meticulously as any Brahmin in the 
exact state of my ordering before the .Heavenly Host; 
“the gentry,” who were a little lower than the angels ; 
the professional class, to which we clung desperately; 
the trades-people ; and “the Common People” — that 
is to say, the Pit. 

Even before I was five I was a snob incipient. It 
was my first outlook on Society. It inoculated me 
with a virus which poisoned me for many long years. 

I hated them, I, of five years, the Common People, 
none the less because some of them gave my father 
his bread and butter by paying, or not paying, rent. 
Before I was ten I stoned them even. “The Common 


THE SHADOW 


17 


People.” They were the rent-payers. They were the 
sweating, hobnailed, friezed clods, made for me and 
the likes of me upon which to walk. “The Common 
People” — they were the girl in our kitchen — the girl 
who was my slave, and who worshipped my imperial 
self in the way that the Common People have. And 
it was this clod — the irony of the thing — and her like 
that shaped me and moulded me in the plastic of life. 

The Common People have their revenges. 

Yet there was something in the Common People 
that I feared. Something which made me uneasy 
when I was with them — when they gave me a glass of 
milk or water at a farmhouse — when the warty, cal- 
loused sailor made me a tailless wonder of a sun kite 
— when they praised my legs and physique. Then I 
feared them. But I never feared them so much as 
when I felt something pricking underneath; something 
breaking upwards in the dawn of my life; something 
that would have been love if it had not been hate and 
contempt also — something unformed, unconscious, but 
there it was. 

The Common People have their revenges. 


Ill 


THE IDEA OF GOD 

These loves and hates I developed long before I de- 
veloped the Idea of God. 

It doesn't matter what the mother teaches — the 
child develops God in his own way and in his own 
image. God to me was the man in the picture on the 
stairs with the long, clean-shaven upper lip — bearded, 
brutal, mormon-like, patriarchal. Implacable. He 
was Jehovah. 

I did not hate Him — I certainly did not love Him 
or particularly fear Him; for He was natural law — 
something one did not argue about. He was “the 
Thing that did things." He was. 

With this formidable Spirit I kept in close, almost 
hourly, communication ; a sort of debtor and creditor 
communication. In the earlier days I pleaded with 
my Creditor as humbly as was possible in so stiff- 
necked a Christian as I. I regarded Him as the Mas- 
ter of the Universe, and therefore my Master; and 
being determined with a wholly uncalculating egotism 
to get any advantage accruing from the arrangement, 
I laid before Him the minutest acts of my life even 
as I laid before Him each morning and evening my 
parents and relations and nearer acquaintances, and 
after them the whole world, which, as a saviour of 
humanity, I placed at the throne of grace and mercy 
18 


THE IDEA OF GOD 


19 


and benefits-to-be. I felt, perhaps rightly, that so 
powerful a Spirit would demand unutterable abase- 
ment; surrender; fear: and I abased myself as well 
as I could, but knew, even in those early years, that I 
had not succeeded; that I was not afraid either of 
Him or of anything living ; and was secretly gratified 
and concerned when I one day heard an outraged 
countrywoman tell my mother wrathfully that ‘‘Mas- 
ter John feared neither God nor devil.” She was only 
partly right, however, for I feared the Devil very 
much indeed. 

As I grew in wisdom and stature, whilst as before 
I undertook nothing without first consulting Him, this 
gradually resolved itself into a sort of stewardship 
on my part, more as though we had been partners in 
the transaction — as indeed we were — than anything 
else. I pictured this bearded, implacable, Being, sitting 
formidably up there in the City of Gold and Iron, one 
hand curved omnipotently around the great ear, al- 
ways in attendance, waiting to hear the reports of me, 
His earthly representative. From His exalted posi- 
tion He gave me counsel and replied to my enquiries 
as to whether I had done right or was about to do 
right, with Jovian nods or frowns. With Him, I con- 
structed a perfectly perfect, mechanical heaven, earth, 
and hell, into which everything and everybody were 
meticulously fitted from the wretch in the Pit to the 
Being on the Throne, like Noah and the animals in the 
ark. 

Love for this Thing I could not have. I tried to 
place my hard stubbly head and lay my prickly heart 
upon the brown sackcloth, rope-gathered bosom of the 
Most High, but I could not. He smelt of mould, of 
cloistered recesses, and especially of the acrid smoky 


20 


PASSION 


scent of the grey stone church in which we worshipped 
on Sundays. I could no nlore lay my pulsating head 
upon the leathery bosom of my Heavenly Father than 
I could have laid it upon that of my earthly father, 
who also was from me remote, but whom I loved as 
he loved me. 

And so He never won my love — only a sort of re- 
spectful fear; one tinged with a nice calculation of 
profit and loss. 

This God was immensely confused in my mind with 
another spirit, an Indweller, that at times made me 
acutely aware of his presence. He was the unerring 
spirit that demanded insistently against that other pul- 
sating Indweller. Whilst Jehovah looked indifferently 
on, these two beings fought within — or rather the In- 
dweller I called conscience did not fight, he underlay 
that other turgid, turbulent Being; he controlled him, 
certainly; accurately. He was not of me, but in me. 
He was a familiar. Sometimes I know I thought of 
him as God, only that he was so intimate and in a way 
so friendly. And I was not friendly to God, as I have 
said. 

I was never under any illusions about this Indweller. 
I knew from the beginning that he could neither be 
disproved nor cajoled. I did not wish either to abolish 
or to cajole him; I was too conscientious. But there 
he was, and there I was. Sometimes he would be an 
irritating figure of fate pointing out to me the hard 
thorny path of duty; then he would be the glutted 
feeling of conscience satiated. He, the Indweller, was 
a prig. 

I was a prig. Under the stimulus of this Indweller, 
I believed that every tiny act of my life was the act 
upon which the spheres turned — and so it was. (Per- 


THE IDEA OF GOD 


21 


haps God Himself is the Almighty Prig.) The man- 
ner of my uprising and down-sitting — the ways of my 
thoughts and the ordering of my ways, all these things 
mattered, mattered not only to me personally but to 
all those other countless beings both of earth and 
heaven whom in a sweet unselfish clouded way I loved 
and of whom I felt myself a part. 

And yet I was magnificently non-moral. In some 
things, or rather at certain times, I was entirely con- 
scienceless. I was too iconoclastic to be overtroubled 
with conscience. I would break through all things. 
It was the spirit of the propagandist from Isaiah to 
Torquemada. 

Jesus was something other than his Father. Him I 
loved, for he was mine alone. He was human. He 
understood me and I him. When in my bed each night 
I sang my little evening hymn: 

“Jesus, tender Shepherd, hear me; 

Bless thy little lamb to-night, 

Through the darkness be thou near me, 

Keep me safe till morning light . . . ” 

it was only me and Jesus. It is true that when later in 
the hymn I reached the words: “Thou hast warmed 
and clothed and fed me,” I found it difficult in my 
increasing sleepiness to visualise the “warming, cloth- 
ing, and feeding,” which always showed themselves 
in one way — in the open kitchen fire, in the scent of 
new clothes, and in the steaminess of new bread, and 
feeling as I did that not to see the concrete meaning 
of each line before my eyes was an insult to my 
Friend, I had to force myself to the last assured lines: 

“Take me when I die to heaven, 

Happy there with Thee to dwell.” 


22 


PASSION 


Though the debtor and creditor element did perhaps 
creep in when it came to the recital of my earthly com- 
forts ; yet deeply underneath I was grateful to this tall, 
nightgowned man with the moonshiny eyes who really 
let me lie in his arms (something I could never do with 
anyone else — not even with my mother) ; and I felt 
that he smelt “good.” I went with him everywhere 
in the New Testament, healing the sick, casting out 
devils, and even raising the dead with much noise, an 
idea coming I think from hearing my father once say 
that I “made enough noise to raise the dead.” We 
were close friends. 

The only thing I could never really grasp about 
Jesus was his Crucifixion. (His parthenogenetic 
birth, which I understood in a cloudy way, always 
seemed to me beautifully natural.) This was always 
a mystery to me. I regarded the Crucifixion as a 
shameful murder and as nothing else, and I know I 
was snobbish enough in my dawning thoughts upon 
democracy to slightly disapprove of his consorting 
with the thieves-; but my main feeling was against the 
gibing soldiers, and I hoped always that when they 
appealed to him to save himself that the words might 
change under my angry eyes and show that he had 
come down from the cross and had smitten them with 
the lightnings of Omnipotence. I know I sometimes 
sat there at the foot of the cross when all the others 
had deserted him and saw him descend to smite the 
unbelievers — always with my help — those brawny, 
hypertrophied Caligulas I got from “Clarke's Com- 
mentaries Upon the Bible,” with the bold bad eyes, 
which I recognise to this day as the hall-mark of 
brutal, high-stomached pride. I rewrote the New 
Testament and made it read much better. 


THE IDEA OF GOD 


23 


The central idea that he died for the world, for me, 
I could not understand. My mother used to tell me 
that his death was the hardest in the world; but with 
inexorable logic I pointed to the two thieves by his 
side. Then she told me that it was because he had to 
bear the sins of the world upon his shoulders that it 
was so hard for him to die. I could not see it. I was 
an egotist. I could have died the easier I felt if I had 
been the Central Figure in a Divine Melodrama and 
had died for a world. Perhaps I was one of those 
unbelievers fore-damned from all time. 

The Holy Spirit was a Ghost. Infinitely more 
potent than God. All-pervading. The only Thing 
against which one could commit “the unforgivable 
sin.” Supposing that I had unknowingly committed 
it? This damned thing caused the wan light of fear 
to infiltrate the chambers of my soul. And the worst 
of it was that to my precise, mechanical mind, in which 
all things in earth and heaven fitted into inexorable 
place and “went” in a sort of celestial clockwork, one 
could never “get even” so to speak with this sin, for 
nobody knew what it was. Neither my mother, nor 
my father, nor, later on, the astonished minister whom 
I stopped one day after Sunday-school to ask shyly 
but determinedly what it was. The Reverend John 
Roderick took refuge in theological vagueness, and 
finally before my implacable cross-examination broke 
down in the witness-box and confessed “he didn't 
know what it was but he was sure I hadn't committed 
it.” I despised him for the first time as the vicar of 
God. 

This Ghost haunted the first ten years of my life. 
It was always crouching behind doors — in old wells — 
in the rafters of the church — waiting to pounce upon 


24 


PASSION 


me like the phooka or spirit-horse which crouched 
upon old churchyard walls to break the backs of those 
who walked beneath, and which to me, next to this 
other Ghost, was the most potent, concrete thing of 
these earlier terrors. 

For there were other spirits at this time who stood 
closer, sometimes more friendly, to me than the spirits 
of orthodoxy. These were the things that had crept 
into my heart as the wanderer creeps into the warmed 
hearth of the empty room, before those other, rival 
spirits were superimposed. Perhaps they, the dear 
gods of the past, had always been there. Is it that 
the child is an elemental? Is it that as he grows 
older he forgets the primeval lessons of life? 

God was far away in heaven. Nobody had seen 
God. But “the Good People,” or fairies, were of the 
earth, earthy; close; intimate; they had been seen of 
many people — indeed had been friends to many 
humans in a shy, moodful, aloof way. I, I had not 
seen them, to my great grief, though I felt them; 
felt them when I chanced upon a circle of mushrooms 
whitening under the new moon; felt them innate in 
the foxgloves and the dewdropped grasses where they 
hung tremulous. If I felt them, that was as good as 
seeing them, for sight as I even then knew could be 
very deceitful. And I felt them, felt the sprites of 
air and fire, of earth and water, which filled all things 
about me. 

Jesus — yes Jesus was a dear spirit: yet not a spirit 
— a man. A spirit-man who alone among the heavenly 
host would understand me like the leprechaun , the little 
fairy cobbler whose tick-tack I had often heard behind 
a hedge on a summer’s day as he mended his brogues ; 
or like that wrinkled, red-nosed, whisky-loving sea 


THE IDEA OF GOD 


25 


spirit, whom one sometimes thought one saw dive like 
a cormorant from a lip of black rock for his cave under 
the green waters, putting on his enchanted cap as he 
went. He at least I knew had sometimes made friends 
with humans who liked “good company and a drop 
of the right sort;” and despite my dislike for alcohol 
I loved him for it. 

The Holy Ghost was potent, but remote. “The 
Boody Man,” that horrific, hooded, curved, man — the 
man with the cloaked head — he was real and im- 
manent. I feared him more than all the rest — though 
I prayed to God to keep him from me. The Virgin 
Mary was beautiful, but she was like a Roman Catho- 
lic oleograph — unhuman. The mermaid, despite her 
tail and fishiness, was incredible and close and in- 
timate ; as close as the Banshee, the dark woman who 
combed her long green-black hair, that trailed itself 
like the seaweed of the depths, whom I at least had 
heard as she raised her ullahone over the dead, and 
who was more real to me, and indeed to my poor 
grandmother for her all her Methodism, than any 
spirit of heaven. 

I was a pagan. 

The terrors of theology, and especially of hell, 
might have turned my head had it not been for certain 
sweet doubts mixed with a sort of calculating material- 
ism. When my mother vaguely hinted at the terrors 
of hell being spiritual rather than physical (partly 
to reassure herself I have reason to think), I said 
nothing but fairly hugged myself. Rather than en- 
dure one hour of the flames of a physical hell I would 
have faced placidly through the ages all the spiritual 
terrors held over my head by an offended God. Of 
course I would have bowed my head and tried to feel 


26 


PASSION 


them — but even then I knew I would have secretly 
rejoiced at escaping the fire that really burns. That 
this fire only flamed up intermittent around my shiver- 
ing soul is however clear to me, for I have a distinct 
recollection of fatting out my thighs complacently on 
my chair as we sang the opening line of the children’s 
hymn: "Steeped in the eternal fires of hell. . . 

This hard-headed, hard-hearted view pursued me 
into the midst of my most fervent repentances, which 
took place at frequent intervals; repentances which 
so far as Jehovah was concerned took something of the 
nature of fire-insurance, but which were genuine 
enough in regard to my Friend. I hated to offend him ; 
still more deeply to offend something in myself — per- 
haps myself. I wished to have the delight, the inbrood- 
ing egotistic delight, of having escaped real fire and 
real worms when I repented, and so I would force my- 
self after my repentances, in the joy of being "saved,” 
to belief in the concrete existence of these things, 
viewing with a forbidding and confident eye the im- 
minent peril of those who stood outside the heavenly 
pale. 

At these times I was a bloodthirsty Calvinist: re- 
jecting the doubtful wishy-washy terrors of the Church 
by Law Established and fastening instinctively upon 
the old-fashioned genuine original blood and fire of 
the Methodist meeting house to which my ancient 
grandmother, herself a confirmed and bloodthirsty 
Christian in a sweet assured way and hoping against 
hope, used to take me, to my mother’s Churchy and 
proper disgust. These determined, snuffy people 
were, I felt, upon the right track, as I believe them 
and them alone to be inheld by the tabernacle of the 
true faith. I would not have given tuppence for the 


THE IDEA OF GOD 


27 


eternal chances of the Catholics and the “Established” 
lot, whom in my assured, fanatical moments I could 
see in an accurately situated hell, the fiery hole which 
lay geographically straight down a shaft from heaven, 
with Dives panting for the cooling drop from Lazarus 
. . . and not getting it. 

But always behind was the ineradicable conscience- 
less doubt of the Pit, even when I sat under the “blood 
and fire” administrations, fearing but hating. “Spirit- 
ual terrors” indeed! And so I fell away from grace 
as I fell away from hell. 

If I could have escaped the Devil I believe that even 
at that time I could have burst from the Idea of the 
Pit — but he was a concrete reality. I could not get 
away from this velvet-coated, velvet-tongued gentle- 
man of the pointed beard, slightly curled and scented, 
with the highly polished top-hat, frock coat and patent 
leathers of civilisation — the insignia of Devildom as 
of Christendom. (The horn, hoof, and claws I re- 
jected with the instinct of the born unbeliever.) He 
was a powerful Entity who had been worshipped by 
countless millions before I was — and I felt there must 
be an excellent reason for these things — the existence 
of the Devil himself. Whatever doubts I might have 
had about his habitat — and I thought of him much 
more as the man I had read about in my favourite 
book of Job, raging up and down the earth seeking 
whom he might devour, whose paths were of the 
world, worldly, than anything else — I had no doubt, 
nor, all things considered, have I to-day much doubt 
of his existence. He, like God, was an unarguable 
quantity. 

Anyhow, if he did exist, I wanted to escape him 
and worked out the thing like a mathematical formula. 


28 


PASSION 


But behind all this calculation, there was the passion 
of idealism — the fanatical, clean idealism of the young 
child. Whatever may have been my doubts about 
death deciding one’s eternal bliss or misery, I had no 
doubt whatever that what people called “death” was 
something of unknown import with transcendent after- 
effects. I felt that all men should know about some- 
thing, something not clear in my own mind, some- 
thing in which Jesus and other wonderful things came. 
I would have all men to be saved — saved to something 
I could not explain to myself — helped up those starry 
heights where I, a pilgrim, was climbing. This was 
the dominant thing, this reaching forward and up- 
ward, forward and upward to something beyond, 
something that haunted the starlight above the rosy 
peaks that were “over the hills and far away.” 

And then, there might be a hell — everybody said 
there was. I could have believed them but that child 
though I was, or perhaps because I was child, I saw 
that the grown-ups themselves did not believe in it. 
If they had, they would have rushed out into the 
streets (I always thought of it first as a rushing out 
into the streets) and preached at one another until 
they had plucked one another as brands from the 
burning. Whereas around me they were buying and 
selling and walking and talking. That way, it seemed 
to me, madness lay. 

To be “religious” meant fanaticism — it could mean 
nothing else — if one really believed in hell and heaven 
then one should scream hell to high heaven in and 
out of season. John the Baptist, like my other heroes, 
had no “close” season in these things — had no times 
when it was considered not quite polite, not good form. 


THE IDEA OF GOD 


29 

to refer to these things — as for instance at dinner 
parties. 

But the grown-ups don’t believe: they wear the 
rags of a tatterdemalion Christianity — only the rags. 

It was this childlike exaltation which made me at 
this time decide to become a missionary to the black- 
est of the African tribes, of whom I had heard from 
the missionaries. The first thing, logically, was to 
let the people farthest from the light know of the 
light: once that had been done their blood would lie 
on their own woolly heads as I felt silently the blood of 
the unrepentant whites about me lay upon theirs. And 
very miserable this decision made me. For I was 
earthy too, and I did not want to leave my father 
and mother and grandmother, and the flowers and 
stones, the mountains and sea about me. However, 
when I thought of Jesus, my Jesus, I knew I must go. 

But of these struggles I said nothing to anybody. 

This thing came back at me for many years — it 
was something upon which I could not drop the veils 
of memory — the effort to do so only flung me into 
other hells, conscience-hells, where I suffered the tor- 
tures of the soul upon whom the gates of heaven have 
been shut. I had a fierce, frantic joy when I clenched 
my teeth in my resolution to go to the Africans — it 
was doing my extremest .... and in those moments 
I rose above the trammels of the flesh into something 
transfigured — transfigured with the fearful joy of 
being the saviour of souls alive before the Lord. 

But my theology, like that of my elders, was at 
times mixed, flickering, intermittent. I no more be- 
lieved in the death eternal than I believed in the death 
temporal. The thing which lay behind all those other 


30 


PASSION 


things, and to which my mind, however unconscious, 
however confused, returned again and again in those 
days, was the impossibility of annihilation. I did not 
believe in death. I knew, unerring, that there was 
no death — I at any rate was deathless, and if I — why 
not others? I knew it from the one dead person I 
had seen at this time, which so to speak brought the 
idea of death to a head. 

I could understand old people dying in a sense — 
that was the way of all flesh — but when I heard that 
Kathleen Coulahan was “dead,” I simply refused to 
believe it. I did not say that to anybody — I simply 
sat there with my tongue in my cheek and listened to 
the prattle of my elders as a very old person might 
listen to the babblings of a child. I had seen Kathleen 
only a few days before. She had walked near me in 
the townhall with her black-brown hair brushed 
smoothly from the starry eyes which looked out death- 
lessly upon something. I knew that she could not die, 
and when I went to see her, my first dead body, I was 
still more assured. 

She lay there in the great white bed, with the little 
plaster crucifix and font against the dark oak of the 
bed-back, dressed like a Bride of Christ, the death- 
robe, a laced, dark-blue China silk I remember it was, 
gathered over the childish breasts that showed faintly 
underneath; the face white as in life, and the black 
hair braided down each side of the dark arched brows. 
The golden murk of the four great candles that sen- 
tinelled her bed showed me the misty, socketed eyes 
looking at me — looking at me in the steadfast swim- 
ming way they had in life — but clearer, more trans- 
lucent. That after a time I saw the long lashes lying 
so surely on the pale cheeks — that they had locked 


THE IDEA OF GOD 


31 


the eyes — did not change me. She was somewhere 
near — not in a remote heaven or hell — but near. The 
thing behind the eyes was living. No, she was not 
dead. People did not die. There was no death. 


IV 


THE GIFT OF THE GODS 

By this time the shadow had definitely materialised 
about me. It had actually been imminised by the dusky, 
tawny-haired angel, whose hair waved amongst the 
stars upon the single stained-glass window of our 
church, trailing them in the meshes. She must have 
got there by mistake for I have never seen an angel 
like her since. She was beautiful as a human. 

I had seen her countless times without heeding; 
but one summer’s evening when the sun set in a golden 
glory behind her, I saw her as she really was, a thing 
of ivory flesh and warm, olive blood. It was the first 
time I had looked on a woman. I gazed entranced, 
whilst the organ burst into a diapason of glorification 
. . . not of heaven, but of the world, the flesh, and 
the devil . . . and yet of heaven too. 

The mind of the young boy, like his voice which 
holds in its strands something quivering of the stars, 
is the most exquisite of all things created. The young 
girl is coarse, dead, compared to the young boy; 
though in after life they change places. 

Women have come and gone since in my life, but 
the Girl in the Window is the dominating persistent 
influence, holding all others to the end appointed. 
Through her I could conquer the Universe — be a god : 
through her, like Lucifer Son of the Morning, I could 
fall headlong into the glory of the stars below. “Luci- 

V /ys-. 


THE GIFT OF THE GODS 33 

fer Son of the Morning/’ He was no fallen angel, 
but was the lust of life and virtue. 

The young child is the most conscious as it is the 
most delicate of all things. The child unspoiled is 
cleaner than the blue ether — more impressionable. 
The child-mind is of infinite, subjective delicacy to 
record — -that is, to be “conscious.” For the thing that 
underlay the thing behind the Girl in the Window was 
consciousness. 

That the consciousness of the child is subjective, 
that it is a flickering from the conscious to the uncon- 
scious, does not prevent the pictures it records from 
limning themselves momentarily intense. It is the 
deserts in the memory of the adult which makes him 
think of his childhood in patronising contempt — con- 
tempt for what he regards as its unconsciousness. 
“Childhood?” There are no children. 

But the consciousness of a child, its very “self-con- 
sciousness,” is a sex consciousness. That is, it has 
its root in the sex-instinct, which in my case, and I 
am sure in that of countless others, shadowed itself 
within four or five years of birth. The actual physical 
adolescence is altogether insignificant compared with 
the graduated mental adolescence of sex which pre- 
cedes it, as thought must precede act, and as con- 
sciousness antedates conscience — which can only first 
show itself through action. 

I was intensely conscious — with nerves in the place 
where I sat down. I was a palpitating ganglion of 
protoplasm, the filaments of my being floating in the 
life ether, responsive to the faintest message. 

Nothing happened about my apparently unconscious 
self that did not register itself, a register to be given 
out in the years, unfailing, microscopic. My mother 


34 


PASSION 


could not move without my knowing it — could not 
blow her nose without my noting the method and 
duration and intensity of the blow. My father could 
not shuffle his feet under the table or move his lips 
in the peculiar sucking way that he had without my 
seeing or at least feeling it. A visitor could not call 
upon my mother or a fishwoman come to the street 
door without my noting how the one did her hair or 
the other tied her brogues — just as I noted a new dress 
or a new pair of gloves in church. It was as though 
I were suspended over all things that went on beneath 
me, as though I were an occult intelligence taking note 
silently, meticulously, and as is the way with occult 
intelligences, without thought. There were times 
when I could almost hear — at least I called it “hearing” 
— the thoughts in people’s hearts. (I always thought 
of them as thinking in the heart and not in the brain, 
which even then I regarded as an inferior vehicle of 
consciousness.) My mind was microphonous. I even 
blushed at “being caught” hearing them — that was 
when they looked up at me — as though I had been an 
eavesdropper. 

But this consciousness of mine was a “self-con- 
sciousness,” that is, a consciousness, a knowledge, of 
self — which leads to all other knowledge. I listened 
— saw — felt — but I could not bear to be heard or seen 
or touched. I blushed furiously if I entered a room. 
I was so self-conscious that I liked to eat alone, not 
churlishly but as a private act, and blushed if a stran- 
ger addressed me when at my food, a habit that did 
not leave me till long after childhood. And I felt the 
presence of the inanimate as of the animate things 
and was sometimes shy even with the former, which I 
believed heard and saw and felt in their own way. 


THE GIFT OF THE GODS 


35 


But I would not have you think that this was the 
blush of shame. These things were the blush only of 
consciousness — the flashing recognition of all things 
about me. For the child-mind is a room of glass — 
floors; walls; ceiling. (That the glass of all child- 
ininds is not equally translucent is obvious — but the 
child-mind is glass, of one sort or another.) It is 
afterwards the cobwebs spin themselves over against 
the light that irradiates. This is true of all young 
children until they are calloused by the laughs of their 
elders — broken into the bloody fraternity of the 
“grown-ups.” 

All this child-consciousness is so instinct with life, 
with passionate delicacy, that it records and notes 
things of which it can have no intellectual concept. 
It has a sort of frenzy against coarseness. I know 
I had it. My mother, doing certain of the intimate 
things, was heedless of the child-eyes. I saw every- 
thing, hated everything. When my aunt Bella in the 
night watches forgot the child — the child heard and 
hated. And each one of these things was set down 
precisely, and like the lights in a dark valley became 
clearer as the child climbed the precipices of life to 
manhood. 

And all these things touched somewhere upon sex 
— upon the girl in the window. 

This sex-consciousness of mine had behind it the 
thing which stands behind all the idea of sex, that is, 
creation; and the thing behind that is “logos” — the 
Word that gives expression to the Idea — for creation 
is impossible without logic. I was logical as a god. 
I was God, for with my consciousness, that conscious- 
ness which is creation, from which the stars sprang 
out of chaos, I constructed my own cosmos about me, 


36 


PASSION 


in which everything, from my grandmother to the 
pink lilacs on our walls, had its place. 

This power to create is the common heritage of all 
children. It is imagination — the gift of the gods, 
without which nothing is. It is the birth-gift of the 
child. 

As a very young child, I felt, vaguely, a sort of 
conspiracy about me against this imagination of mine, 
the Conspiracy of Age against Youth, which instinc- 
tively I did not think of as “imagination, ” as some- 
thing apart, but as me. I found about the wings of 
my imagination that drove me sunwards, cobwebs that 
spun themselves out of the ether around me, especially 
in those later days when this imagination of mine was 
breaking me out from that other thing of which I 
shall speak in its place. These things spun themselves 
not actively to clog and hamper me, but they clogged 
and hampered me all the same. When I told of things 
as I saw them every day I found myself, to my puz- 
zlement, accused of exaggeration, or even of lying. 

Two things at this very early period of my life 
stand out in my memory. I remember seeing a rail- 
way engine with a carriage sauntering down our main 
street and snorting fire and brimstone. I can see the 
green body with the black hair lines on it. The wheels 
I cannot see, nor can I see the railway carriage behind 
it clearly. I was so overwhelmed by the phenomenon 
of an orderly locomotive which hitherto had always 
run upon the iron lines provided by government, 
breaking into revolution, jumping the rails, and carry- 
ing terror to the shaking walls of our streets, that I 
rushed in to tell my mother. 

My mother received the news coldly, almost for- 
biddingly. She even hinted at my unreliability and 


THE GIFT OF THE GODS 


37 


brought up that other incident which limns itself in 
my memory, that day when I encountered before our 
door a lion, who to my exceeding great dismay blinked 
placidly at me. She pointed out that on that occasion 
no lion had escaped, and that the only thing to meet 
this sort of original sin was the corner and the fool's 
cap. 

It was in vain that I protested I had seen the loco- 
motive and the lion. (Had I dared I could have told 
her of still more wonderful monsters I had met.) But 
I was caned nevertheless, and it made me chary of 
speaking of the things that I saw and even drove me 
into some very pretty lying and a cutting down of 
fact to fiction suitable to the mental stature of my 
parents. 

It may have been a traction engine, the first of the 
traction engines, I saw, and my lion may have been 
only a woolly Irish sheep-dog — but I saw a locomotive 
and a lion. 

I say I constructed my world about me. My mind 
travelled out with the unerring logic of the young 
child, and built its world from the material to its 
thoughts like a god. That is how worlds are created, 
for all worlds are only thought-worlds, and I can 
only say that my world, with its lions and locomo- 
tives, was a more real, a more definite, and certainly 
a more logical world, than that of the grown-ups, as 
I discovered in the after years. 

This thing came to me not in a flash, as most things 
came to me in those first fresh days. It came like a 
shadow across the face of the sun. It put the first 
doubts of the grown-ups, and especially of my parents, 
into my mind. In the beginning, as the authors of 
my being, I had no doubts about them. 


38 


PASSION 


In my own way I had a perfectly definite reason 
for everything that I did — for was I not logical ? The 
grown-ups did all kinds of things without apparently 
any reason, or only a pretended reason. The things I 
did were clear to me. The things the grown-ups did 
were apt to be “mixed” and doubtful, and I am still 
unregenerate on this point. The wonders of the stars 
and the churchyard — of the sea and of the cat in our 
kitchen; the entire beauty of Johnny the Saint, the 
half -idiot beggar at the corner ; the things that waited 
in the old room below the crazy stairs where nobody 
but me ever went; the magic properties of bamboo 
canes with plaited gold wire tops; the things, cold, 
frosty, bearded, that lived in the stalactite caves — what 
the grey pirate scaldy-crow did before dawn, and what 
Regan the wolfhound thought about him; the occult 
properties of running water ; and the stories from the 
sea told to me by the green tide that ran under our 
bridge . . . the grown-ups saw none of these things. 
The things they saw, or pretended they saw, had no 
existence. They had no nerves, these people — they 
saw nothing. I — I saw everything. 


V 


THE COPPER HALFPENNY 

Behind all this growth and definition, something had 
been materialising. It was something that so to speak 
underlay all these gods and devils in my cosmogony. 

This thing was to me neither the one nor the other 
— it was not living, or if living was instinct with a 
dead life — it was “a thing,” just as I thought of that 
other thing that lay still deeper and had thrown its 
golden shadow over me and which also could not be 
defined. As I fed the thing with the thoughts and 
fears of my heart, it grew; for such things grow on 
fears, as perhaps the gods of mankind are fed from 
nothingness into Powers that master their creators. 

The thing first showed itself as a copper halfpenny. 

Someone gave me a new halfpenny on my sixth 
birthday. This round shining thing with the picture 
of a god on the outside and a woman’s head on the 
other at once prisoned about my imagination. The 
god — a long lean-looking devil — was threatening 
something with his spear and helm and rested upon 
something that might be the world itself. The god 
on the halfpenny. 

This thing, which to my six-year-old soul could 
unlock the riches of Sheba, was not to be laid out it 
seemed. This was not something to be flung care- 
lessly away — it was to be hoarded, this thing. 

39 


40 


PASSION 


My mother it was that showed me the way of it. 
She held it between her finger and thumb, a round, 
shining symbol — held it where the sun came in through 
the window until it shone again. It shone until it 
filled the room with light, until it dimmed the glory of 
the green tide and the purple mountains outside. 

This thing she said was all-powerful. With it, one 
could do anything. Without it, one was lost. So it 
must be hoarded. For the want of it men had died 
of hunger. To get it men had given efforts and 
prayer. And here was the shining god between my 
own diminutive finger and thumb. 

But it would escape it seemed if not locked up. It 
had the power of self -vanishing. It must be put under 
lock and key. 

And so she bought me a little hazel box with minia- 
ture clamps and bars upon it, a key, and two slits in 
the top through which to pass this thing. With my 
own trembling fingers I plunged its glory into the 
darkness -of the box and gloated that I had placed 
power under lock and key. Cooped up power. 
Leashed power. 

Each morning I rattled the god in the box, fearing 
he might get out through the slits, but rejoicing to 
hear him. Those other gods of mine were real, terri- 
bly real, immanent — but this thing was more, it was 
imminent. It was invisible like the Great Ones, but 
it could be heard — not felt only. 

One day, a long time after, I was introduced to a 
secret drawer in my mother’s davenport where there 
hid other gods, little gods of silver. Each of these 
gods it seemed was eight times as powerful as my first 
god of copper. They were fourpenny pieces, and they 
had the curious property of getting more powerful the 


41 


THE COPPER HALFPENNY 

longer they remained in the drawer. Originally eight 
times as strong as my halfpenny, they were now I 
was told at least twelve times as strong. And there 
were many of them. I thought of them sometimes, 
shining there in the darkness of the drawer, growing 
in power and fearing they would burst out one night 
in a silvery murderous stream. 

Later on, my uncle Jerry from London placed in 
my hand another of these things — something I had 
not seen before. It was very small and worn with a 
curious brightness of its own, not the brazen bright- 
ness of my first halfpenny, but a mellow, luscious, 
yellowy glow — the glow of potency. I knew by in- 
stinct that I held something specially potent in my 
small, dirty paw, and learned from my pleased mother 
that this was gold — a golden Half-Sovereign which 
could do as much as two hundred and forty of my 
Halfpenny. (I always reckoned everything from the 
Halfpenny.) 

I had an immense respect and fear of this half- 
king who could do so much, but when I proposed to 
change him into two hundred and forty bright Half- 
pennies, I was shocked to discover that once this thing 
was changed, it lost its potency and melted away as 
my mother said poetically, “like the early cloud and 
the morning dew,” of which the Reverend John 
Roderick so often spoke in church. (From that mo- 
ment I always thought he referred to this golden 
thing.) 

My father had to be called in to so important a 
discussion, he who it seemed was an expert at getting 
this thing and, as my mother was careful to point 
out with an admonitory forefinger, of keeping it and 
not turning it into halfpennies. To my puzzled de- 


42 


PASSION 


light I discovered that this little gold god could be 
locked up, not in a money box, that was too insecure, 
but prisoned with pen and ink in a book. A book 
with orange covers, with my name on the outside, 
and inside a lot of straight-ruled black lines which I 
thought of as magic bars to hold my Half-Sovereign. 
Even I was not allowed to keep this book. It took 
so powerful a person as my father to hold it safe. 

Being of an enquiring turn of mind, I wished to 
master the ins and outs of this, the most important 
thing in the world, and the science of its acquisition. 
It confused me slightly, for when I asked if it were 
a real god like the God of Heaven, I was told by my 
not altogether un-pleased mother that it was not alive. 
Yet I knew that the little gold god was alive. It felt 
alive — smooth and gliding and lissome and potent. I 
had already learnt it was something to be prayed for 
not to — for I have a faint recollection in my earlier 
knowledge of the thing of lisping infantile prayers 
to it — the god in the box. 

However I had to have an explanation — I always 
insisted upon explanations — and we finally compro- 
mised upon the understanding that though it was not 
God, or a god, it was the instrument of God for good 
— that He could work better through it than anything 
else and that it could accomplish all things; and that 
the lack of it was a sort of shame. 

But this led to a further stream of interrogation. 
Was Sir Clanrickarde Kerrigan then a very good man 
since he had so many more of these things than any- 
body else about us? I knew nothing about Sir Clan- 
rickarde Kerrigan, but somehow as I caught his rolling 
roving eye peering through its monocle behind the 
great Punch nose that curved over the top of the 


THE COPPER HALFPENNY 


43 


oak pew on Sundays, I thought of him as a very bad 
man. My mother seemed hazy about this. She said 
that no doubt Sir Clanrickarde was an excellent man, 
but that rich men were not always good men. And 
it was then perhaps, or later, that I stumbled upon the 
unwelcome discovery that my Devil also worked 
through this god as well as his Master. (I know, 
hazily, that the story of the Golden Calf and the Chil- 
dren of Israel was tangled up with this discovery, but 
how and when I cannot now remember.) It was 
exceeding puzzling. 

However there could be no doubt about my uncle 
Jerry upon whom at this time I placed my hopes for 
the character of the god. He came upon a visit from 
London, leading with him his twins, who looked like 
children born out of due time, clothed in purple and 
fine linen, as he was himself. I learned that my uncle 
Jerry was a good man, “and most respectable.” There 
could be no doubt about my uncle Jerry. And he 
had learned the secret of acquisition. He had thou- 
sands and thousands of these little gold gods “locked 
up in paper” I heard my father say. (He always 
said “in paper,” which I took it referred to countless 
orange books.) And Uncle Jerry went to my own 
particular brand of Christianity, the little Methodist 
church, and to my edification led the church in prayer, 
praying especially with his knee on the chair into his 
right hand against “the lusts of the flesh” and “the 
lust for gold,” to which he referred rather stiff- 
neckedly and unreasonably it seemed to me, as “the 
root of all evil.” At table he alluded with a sort of 
melancholy boastfulness to the little money he had 
locked up “in paper.” But there he did not call it 
the root of all evil, and when I asked him how he 


44 


PASSION 


managed to get “the root” he looked at me with 
astonishment in his weak grey eyes whilst the tufted 
hair on his temples stood up mutely. 

I heard everything about me as I have said, and 
after my uncle had left was grieved to hear my mother 
refer to him disappointedly and disparagingly. “That 
man has too much money, James ; it’s his ruling passion 
— that’s what’s the matter with him!” I heard her 
say to my father (it seemed he had fallen below my 
mother’s expectations in the matter of presents), 
whilst my father remarked sententiously that “the 
Devil always enters the heart by a golden door.” 

So to settle the matter with myself, and to place 
Uncle Jerry in his correct position in my cosmos, I 
damned him then and there, and definitely placed man- 
kind into two categories — those who used Devil’s gold 
and those who used God’s gold. My gold was God’s 
gold I decided. 

That there was Devil’s gold I knew also from the 
way in which my godfather Macriorgan was regarded. 
He was rich and lived morosely alone with one old 
woman in a sort of inverted pepper-box which sen- 
tinelled the end of the Terrace, and which we called 
“the Castle.” It seemed that he, like my uncle Jerry, 
was “disappointing,” that word which my mother 
applied to all kinds of people. He had “not come up 
to the scratch” my father said. They had expected 
something or other from him which was not quite 
clear when he consented to become my godfather. 
“But a five-shilling bit in seven years isn’t going to 
do much for the boy.” 

This man was treated awesomely by my mother 
and father upon the rare occasions when he came to 
tea. There were always minute preparations for this 


THE COPPER PIALFPENNY 


45 


event, certain delectable comestibles which the old man 
loved being laid in from the local confectioner, whilst 
to everything he said my father and mother said “yes” 
in subdued but convinced voices as they watched out 
at him deferentially. 

In the street I noticed that people had the same 
curious watchful deference, with something else under- 
neath I could not understand. A sort of watchful- 
waiting like two strange dogs when they meet each 
other. 

But when he was not there I heard many half -veiled 
things, things even then put out doubtfully and with 
fear. 

A chance remark I overheard one day from my 
mother lightened this thing somewhat. “Usury, 
James, usury! No luck can come from usury!” She 
said in a tone of venomous conviction and I gathered, 
God knows how, that my godfather was a money- 
lender — a man who gained fresh power by venturing 
the power in his hands, which I had hardly thought 
of up to this time definitely as “money.” It was a 
dangerous game and he had been bitten more than 
once. But it was what my father called “a paying 
game,” and he ought to know; and then he used the 
words I had heard my mother use, use them as though 
in extenuation of the thing .... “but it’s the ruling 
passion .... the ruling passion.” 

These words, which I only partly understood, stuck 
in my mind. There was something masterful in them. 
“The ruling passion — the ruling passion.” 

My father had grey, lightsome eyes. Whenever he 
spoke of the thing in the box his eyes lighted up and 
expanded slightly — my mother's contracted. I know 
when my godfather died and as we three sat in the 


46 


PASSION 


little bare room on the ground floor of the pepper-box, 
waiting for the coffin to be carried downstairs and 
into the fine black hearse with the waving plumes and 
prancing horses that stood before the white painted 
railings, I heard my mother say to my father, not 
once but several times: “I wonder how much he left 
. . . how much he left . . and this was also the 
little gold god it seemed. 

So this thing even followed people to the edge of the 
grave, but they had, as I found out from my private 
investigations into the prayerbook and otherwise, to 
leave it upon the earthy side. Yet its powers were not 
exhausted by death, which destroyed everything else 
— for always, as I was now careful to listen for it, 
when anybody died, I heard my mother or my father 
or others say: “How much did he leave? How much? ,, 
And these peopled eyes, like those of my father and 
mother, either contracted or expanded according to 
the person. 

I had learned out by this time to work things out 
for myself and not to “bother” my mother with ques- 
tions which were answered unsatisfactorily. I pon- 
dered over these little gods my godfather had left, 
left to the missionaries, and so unaccountably angering 
my father and mother, who should have been pleased, 
as I was, to find that my godfather's gold had been 
God’s gold after all. But I wanted to know why the 
powers of the thing did not go when death came, which 
I thought finished everything of this kind at least. 

Failing internal enlightenment, I went down to the 
kitchen to ask Ellen about it. 

She enormously heightened my respect for the little 
gold god by telling me that even when people died it 
could do much. It could buy masses for the soul and 


THE COPPER HALFPENNY 


47 


“save the poor crathures the torments of purgathory.” 
It could even get them admittance to heaven, but she 
was a trifle cloudy about this. 

Now was this God’s gold or Devil’s? As a strict 
Protestant of the bluest possible type, I did not be- 
lieve in purgatory, but I had discovered so many sur- 
prising things at this time, and as one never knew, I 
thought there might be something in it all the same. 
Anyhow there were the tangible elements of the fine 
black horses, the waving plumes, the high oak, flower- 
decked coffin with the silver handles, and the carriages 
behind, whereas when “Johnny the Saint” died, even 
though he was a saint, he was put in a cheap wooden 
coffin and plumped down in the cold earth without 
even a headstone. And only a handful of bedraggled 
people followed the coffin. I knew all this for I had 
met Johnny on his way to the cemetery as I returned 
one Sunday from church. 

It was then I first sensed the quiet, gripping, uncon- 
scious struggle for this thing that was going on every- 
where about me. It was a struggle, incessant, ruth- 
less, minute. They were all in it, from Johnny the 
Saint who hunted my father for “coppers,” to the 
Reverend John and the Pope of Rome with his “Peter’s 
Pence.” The woman who came to our door with a 
codfish fresh caught in the green seas outside was I 
noticed good-humoured and even sweet in her opening 
sentences, as was my father or my mother, until one 
of them said “How much?” Then, to my curiosity, 
I would see the eyes of all three harden, the voices 
take a raucous edge, the very expressions change — but 
when the transaction was completed and the money 
and fish exchanged, I found them their former selves 
again. 


48 


PASSION 


And I found this impression threading itself through 
the ordinary friendliness of the life of our little town 
like a grey fishing-line through the sea depths — some- 
thing sinuous, indeterminate, sinister, about it — now 
lost to sight, now waving doubtfully. The woman 
from whom I bought my halfpennyworths' of goose- 
berries and who normally was my very good friend, 
with a face like one of her own dried crab-apples, 
made the berries as loose as she could and swept one 
or two off the top as she measured them into my 
pocket, but pretended out of her largess and because, 
as I could feel, she was rather ashamed of the whole 
thing, to heap up her measure. It was the same thing 
that ran through all else. People tried to cover over 
this ugly bitter struggle with words — like “something 
over for handsel," that is, something for nothing; 
something to take the raw, keen, unfriendly edge from 
the battle of the bargains. But they all acted like 
murderers who knew that they were all implicated and 
tried to put as good a face on it as possible. 

It was the same with friendships. People I found 
could be good friends until someone talked of money 
— then something happened. Even my father said that 
to lend money to a friend was to lose a friend. And 
there was a thing called law, and “having the law on 
you," which was all part of the struggle for my little 
god. But I determined that if there was such a strug- 
gle, nobody should put profane hands on the god in 
the box, and so I struggled with the best or worst of 
them. 

So far, the thing in the box was just “the thing in 
the box," like the thing in the drawer, and the thing 
in the orange book. These were gods of gold and 
silver and copper, powerful gods, but with their powers 


THE COPPER HALFPENNY 49 

still unleashed so far as I was concerned. They were 
still dead things to me — shiny but dead. 

Then the god burst out of the box and became a 
living thing, no longer a shining shadow, but a sort 
of Boody Man which began to materialise about me. 
To say that it was only the child’s thought which in- 
vested this thing with its terrors is to say nothing — the 
thing was substantial — and to this day, when its 
terrors have not abated but grown, I think of it as I 
thought of it at that moment — as a living breathing 
reality, not an abstraction. It was then I first thought 
of it as money . 

So far I had admired the thing. Now I hated and 
feared it. 

My father was a big, full-blooded, grey-eyed man 
with a curious transparency of skull which came to 
me as a kind of gelatinous bladder through which 
something pulsed strongly — something I used to call 
“the chicken.” He was religious, nearly as religious 
as I, dnd like many other religious men, a born gam- 
bler — though I knew nothing of this at the time. 

We had lived very peacefully and pleasantly together 
until the time of the long envelopes — long grey fellows 
who used to come in the mornings and cover the break- 
fast table — come from the great city somewhere be- 
yond there, inaccessible — London. I was old enough 
at this time to gather that these grey-faced messengers 
brought the news of something that was going on in 
the great world, something that worked through what 
was called “limited liability,” for I heard my mother 
and father say the words again and again as though 
they hardly understood them but felt comforted all the 
same by their repetition. 

I had seen my father wave triumphantly a pink slip 


so 


PASSION 


which I knew by now was a powerful “paper” in 
which many gold gods were locked, telling my mother 
that they were on the highroad to something or other 
and assuring my unconscious self across the breakfast 
table that “I needn’t do a day’s work when I grew up 
if I didn’t like.” For work, I gathered, was the 
incubus of mankind, the thing to be escaped as soon 
as possible ; and the only thing that could work vicari- 
ously for another and so be a saviour from this incubus, 
was the little gold god. 

Then the strong full pulse in my father’s temples 
beat stronger as the days went on, the light in his 
eyes glazed, and my mother looked serious. They still 
talked about “limited liability,” but with it were 
mingled references to something they called “shares,” 
something which had to be “covered” and “covered.” 
And there was a shadowy sort of thing called “Grand 
Trunks” which at first I saw as a kind of unruly 
elephant, but which after a time resolved itself into 
the picture of the cuttle-fish dragging down a Spanish 
galleon which hung over our long sideboard . . . but 
all mixed up with the god in the box. This it seemed 
was the thing that had to be “covered,” this thing of 
waving tentacles and slimy power. If the terrible 
suckers were not covered something dreadful might 
happen. 

Something was happening, for I could see the wav- 
ing tentacles of this thing sucking at my father — not 
clearly — but sucking. It was sucking, for the blood 
began to go out of my father’s checks until they were 
first white and then a yellowy grey. Then he began to 
shrink, whilst ever as he shrank his head seemed to 
shrink with his body and “the chicken” beat the more 
strongly as though determined to break a way out. 


THE COPPER HALFPENNY 


51 


They brought him home one day, my father, feet 
and head, where he had dropped in the street. The 
chicken had burst its way out at last. He lived on, 
in a way, with his mouth on one side. 

Then they told me it was my little gold god; now 
transformed into a monstrous cuttle-fish, a thing of 
grey body and doubtful sinuous tentacles which sprang 
from a single, watchful, Eye. From that time I could 
see it waving over me — this Thing which battened on 
men’s blood and left them with twisted mouths. 

It made all things about me unsure I remember. It 
changed my views about the immutability of the Uni- 
verse and perhaps about the personal egotistic protec- 
tion of the Deity. So far, death and twisted mouths 
were things that happened to other people. 


VI 


LOVE AND DEATH 

Neither this thing that had burst upon me from the 
box, nor my father's mouth, had the power to repress 
the violent passion to life that I had, the passion that 
came from my oneness with everything about me. I 
played my games with a fierceness and zestful caution 
that made the other boys a little afraid to play with 
me — I was so fierce and thorough and in a sense ruth- 
less. I do not think I was unfair, but I took my play 
as I took everything — in dead earnest. 

I swam in the green waters outside my window — I 
adventured the darksome thickets on the side of 
Creugh-ma-Geown, mostly with other boys, but my 
eyrie on the top of the old Norman castle I kept to 
myself. Had I been able I would have flown like the 
wild geese that honked overhead in the dark winter 
nights. But wherever I went, whether I climbed, or 
ran, or swam, I took my father's mouth and the little 
gold god with me, as I took the golden shadow of that 
other thing. Into the green waters — into the purple 
shadows of the mountains — up into my stone eyries — 
for that other thing had something of the grey stones 
in it. For good or evil I had to feel and live everything 
together. All things to me were bound up one with 
the other. 

I had never the wish to shut any of these things out ; 

52 


LOVE AND DEATH 


53 


I do not even believe the thought came to me. I 
wanted to play the passion of my life, boy though I 
was, to the full. I didn't think consciously about it. 
It was the only natural thing. And I could never have 
shut out that other thing which by now had come 
closer. It grew as I grew — this impulsive, shadowy 
thing of my thirteenth year. 

Now it was a thing of velvet — of dark rooms — of 
blackened corridors, sun-flashed — a blinded doorway 
that was a sort of Open Sesame to the Thousand and 
One Nights. This thing was always pushing itself at 
me — pressing like the firm body of a young firm 
woman. It was a pricking, a sweetness — a sweetness 
as of death. 

But the thing was there. I waked with it, I slept 
with it ; it came to me in dreams by day and by night, 
in promptings and shadow-pictures. It was vague, 
general, not localised. It was the All-pervading. 

There was something about this thing that was dis- 
graceful, incredible. It came crawling, squatting, in 
vague hinting — in a vision of naked bodies — doubtful 
words — white-aproned women — things half said and 
seen — in double meanings with me mis-understanding 
horribly and pretending not to understand — and hating 
the thing. 

I was shy of it, ashamed, frightened. Frightened 
of it as a child fears a dark room. But of what was 
I frightened? 

The thing came to me not by sight — though some- 
times by scents. It came to me as a shrine within a 
dark forest. As an outflowing. As a laugh. But 
always impossible, echoing, remote. 

Once the thing took definite shape, came close to 
me, and I turned dead — dead inside. It was not 


54 


PASSION 


actively hateful — it was nothing. The mystery en- 
shrouded was all-potent: the reality, the naked reality, 
nothing. But after, after, again, the impulse — the 
reaching out to something unknown as men are led 
across uncharted seas. 

Why ! this thing wasn’t physical at all — but mental. 
No — spiritual. Grossly spiritual. 

What was it I wanted ? What was this thing which 
had no real existence — which left me deadened when 
it came near — which beckoned and glanced and danced 
and drew me when it was remote ? 

I thought of it as running water — as the scent of 
newly opened earth — or was it earth that was slightly 
stale? I smelt it in the newly dug grave (I once caught 
it in a skull), and in the earthy corner of our garden 
where the violets grew, when the spring rains fell there. 

For there was both death and life in this thing. 
Was it the death or the life which impelled me to 
break through to the secret that lay behind, to lose 
myself in a Nirvana of all-knowledge — the impulse 
which at thirteen made me conscienceless, conscience- 
less as the tree-sap that reaches out to the sun? In 
the black magic of the thing, I would have spared noth- 
ing that stood between me and it . . . had I not been 
conscienceful and shy and altogether passionated with 
the life and love of it — something inaccessible like the 
rosy snows of the winter dawns on Creugh-ma-Geown. 

So far I had only thought of it as a nebulous whole, 
the earth in travail — a heavy mass shot by fire and 
wreathed by cloud. Now, as I slipped over my thir- 
teenth year the separation came. It separated itself 
day by day as a wraith separates itself from the clay 
it has left, until I could sense the spirit that informed 
and inspired it. 


LOVE AND DEATH 


55 


I fell in love. She was a shy, fierce, loving little 
thing, rather small for her eleven years, with a vibrant, 
proud way of walking — looking straight in front of her 
and seeing everything with the quick dark eyes, yellow- 
flashed, that looked straight-ly from under the strong 
rather high forehead that ran up into the thick hair 
which fell to the curve of the slender rounded neck. 

I have always believed that she was the child I saw 
look out at me from the middle of the grey stone wall 
when I was a tiny boy. But I am not sure of this — 
I only know that the thought- of the small dark quick 
child looking out from the grey stone wall was a 
memory that was always with me, and perhaps blended 
itself with the face of Sheilah. 

She lived with her father in the great dark house 
at the end of the avenue of the old white ashes. The 
Doctor was a silent lonely man, about whom strange 
stories ran, who had lost Sheilah’s mother in child-bed. 
They said he drank and that he had never forgiven 
Sheilah for causing her mother’s death. Anyhow, no- 
body had ever seen him with the child, who lived in 
the old stone house like a spirit in a tomb. 

Like the Girl in the Window, I must have seen her 
always, but I did not think of her until the day when 
I had been cutting laurels for a bow in the ash wood 
that belonged to her father. I heard the patter of 
Rory O’More, the bloodhound, as he ran in on me 
silently — and rose up, affrighted. (I had always been 
frightened of dogs since the dog sprang at me as a 
child from the blind alleyway), until I heard the little 
determined voice and saw her standing there in the 
spring sunshine amongst the blue-bells in her little 
white muslin dress and black silk stockings — the way 
I always think of her. 


56 


PASSION 


But this day she looked at me and I at her there in 
the sunlit wood where the sun flecked the last year’s 
leaves, and we knew then that we loved each other — 
not as children — not as grown-up people — but perhaps 
as angels love. 

That was the beginning of other meetings in the 
old wood where I learned to make friends with Rory 
O’More. 

She was a Catholic, and she took me with her not 
once, but many times, to the Abbey chapel, that lay 
greyly on the spit of land looking out over the wastes 
of the Atlantic, which roared at the foot of the ruined 
Abbey as it had roared for a thousand years. There 
seated side by side under the incensed lights, listening 
to the silence of the centuries, we told each other all 
the things that lovers tell — though we never talked of 
love. And once she made me kneel before her beloved 
Saint Ursula and prayed for me and my little heretic 
soul — not as a Catholic but as a human being ; for she, 
who knew everything, knew that love was deeper than 
religion — was the only religion. 

She never tried to convert me, but it made her little 
true heart glad that we could both pray to the one God 
that stands above all Saints and all religions. 

Not that Sheilah was always softhearted and mild. 
She could be passionately angry — once even with me 
because I failed to understand something she said — 
and I think of the day she flew at that lout who was 
stoning a puppy to death in the tideway, saw her flash 
at him like a cat and try to sink her nails and teeth 
into his neck, to his astonished shame. And after- 
wards the fit of crying — and then the little hard, proud, 
dumb look. 

And I — I felt so big and strong and grown-up when 


LOVE AND DEATH 


57 


near her . . . and yet so much younger, that she, with 
her little wise head, and wise way of saying things, 
might have been my mother. I came to her in all my 
doubts and fears — but I did not speak to her of that 
other thing, the thing against which I felt she stood, 
unconscious, as the divine hater. I know there were 
things of which, with all her sweet intelligence, she 
could have no conscious understanding, but even I felt 
her as the principle that stood against the other dark 
inbrooding principle — the principle of that thing which 
only Sheilah had the power to drive away. 

With her, the thing was incredible — away from her 
it made her seem remote and powerless and non- 
existent. It held me — haunted me. But now, for the 
first time, and in some strange way through Sheilah, 
it had drawn itself apart into “sex,” had segregated 
“the woman.” My falling in love had defined it, had 
sensualised as it had sensitised it — had at one and the 
same time made it more wonderful and more im- 
possible. 

There was the fresh, dew-lipped, dew-cheeked 
daughter of the Reverend John Roderick, who taught 
me in Sunday-school. I viewed her as the essence of 
virginal perfection, unattainable, incomprehensible. 
(Sheilah I did not think of in that way at all.) She 
would sit there in that Sunday-school class, with the 
light bathing her from thediigh windows, a great nose- 
gay of sweet peas in her bosom, and there I sat before 
her, shy, blushing, and afraid — yes, perhaps afraid, 
though gloating in the size of my thighs which I 
bulged out for the occasion. But had she known that 
the child opposite her had dark piratical thoughts of 
love and kisses and the scent of flowers and a raping 
— an impersonal raping, but a sort of raping of the 


58 


PASSION 


Sabine women — if she had known would she have 
drawn from me, hated me? I do not think so. And 
perhaps she did know. 

The thing in her, like the thing in that Amazonian 
MacIntyre girl, dark and big and bold, her eyes a-slant 
as I have always pictured Jezebel, was the thing that 
stood over against little Sheilah. With Jezebel was 
her lover — a big policeman. In my mind, as I gave 
out my soul before the Lord in the psalms, I had killed 
him, driven the axe deep into his sheep skull, and had 
borne her away — for what? Not for anything defi- 
nite — simply borne her away. It was a new raping — 
like the rape of the servant with the sponge. 

A little monster? Yes. But there was something 
else too with it — something natural and enquiring and 
creative. And all boys are monsters. 

But Sheilah stood behind all this in her little white 
dress and black stockings. And it was then I felt for 
the first time that there was something heartless and 
conscienceless about the thing — something of hate in 
it — more hate than love. Passion was the ultimate 
beastliness — perhaps it is. This thing did not exist 
between Sheilah and me. She and I were lovers. And 
there are many kinds of loves — and in the long after- 
wards in the streets of the great city, when this thing 
pressed upon me, I could see the little straight figure 
standing there in the sunlit wood, the figure that was 
the other part of this thing — that lay deepest in the 
heart of it. 


) 

VII 

“for the sons of gentlemen” 

Of all this my father and mother were as unconscious 
as the phoenix. Any kind of cunning beastliness, as 
any kind of beautiful boy-dreams could have taken 
place under their unseeing eyes. Though once I had 
a passionate, twisted love for my mother, as my 
mother, and now as I ran deeper into my fourteenth 
year the gulf between my parents and myself was 
widening, a gulf that was unspanable. Perhaps it was 
the gulf between the present and the past generations, 
for the child of to-day, the complex, nervous child of 
the end of the nineteenth and the beginning of the 
twentieth century, has leaped the centuries in a decade, 
leaving his progenitors on the other side. 

How had they loved? Did they know of the thing 
that was always with me? Could they show me the 
way of it? The thought of love and them seemed 
indecent, incredible. 

Why should it have seemed indecent, incredible? 
Why was sex an indecent, incredible thing. What was 
this conspiracy, like that other conspiracy of the 
grown-ups, all about me, to shut me out from know- 
ledge? For I, who watched those others with fine-eyed 
persistence, sensed the check of the conversation be- 
fore me — caught, as all children catch, the meaning 
look of the eyes — the aside. “Not before the child.” 
It was not that they spoke of anything definite — they 
59 


60 


PASSION 


never did — but this thing, like the money-passion, was 
always with them; obtruded itself in all conversations; 
ran like a scarlet cord through the currents of their 
thoughts. But “not before the child.” 

What did that grey-eyed, dome-headed monk who 
taught me at the monastery school think of this thing? 
Did he know? Or had not he, like the great broad- 
shouldered eunuch priests who carried something 
holily secretive in their faces and who had bulwarked 
themselves behind the ramparts of Holy Church — had 
he not also shut himself up in a monastery to escape 
this thing? Did he escape it? I asked myself that in 
a vague, wondering way, when I dared. Did he 
escape it? Did the wimpled nuns escape it? the nuns 
shut behind the walled convents of the town. Why 
did they, like my father and mother, never speak of it ? 
And yet, that they should speak of it, seemed incredible. 

This thing cut me off from father and mother and 
teacher. The thing was taboo. They ignored it — so 
that it might not exist. But it existed. 

And so I stood panting, a little beyond the fourteenth 
milestone of my life — pulsating, impassioned — finished 
and unfinishable — ready to go out into the great world 
and, for the time, have this thing overlaid by more 
urgent things. I was to see Sheilah for the last time. 
With the trail of her steamer's smoke down in the west 
she disappeared from my life, lost after her father’s 
death in the great American cities ; though the memory 
of her was not lost but stayed with me as it will always 
stay with me. 


For now I was to be “finished” — I that the mills 
of God were working over and baulking at. I was to 
be finished, to be manufactured, into “a gentleman.” 


“FOR THE SONS OF GENTLEMEN” 61 


I see the meanness of that school to-day, the unbe- 
lievable meanness — the inanity, the insanity of it. “A 
school for the sons of gentlemen — commercial and 
professional.” That was how the advertisement ran, 
with a sort of critical undercurrent that separated the 
professional sheep from the horned goats of commerce. 
“Mortarboards are imperative” — though the impera- 
tive, upon closer acquaintance, turned out to be the 
conditional — like the sons of gentlemen — professional 
. . . and commercial. 

Having the gravest doubts about my personal quali- 
fications, “the sons of gentlemen” fascinated my ego- 
tistical self. The mortarboard, something that to me 
was as foreign as the mason's tool with which I 
vaguely confused it, had its attraction. But the lode- 
stone was the name of the college. Sherlingham. To 
me it was the only name for — not a school, but a 
“college.” “Sherlingham.” How I turned it over on 
my tongue and salivated. It was really I who forced 
my not unwilling parents away from plebeian adver- 
tisements which substituted swimming for the classics 
— and were unspecific about breeding and mortar- 
boards. For when set on a thing, I could be tyrannical 
in my own way and bend even my mother to my will. 

I saw myself, radiant in mortarboard, already the 
insignia of respectability as the silk hat became in the 
afterward, flaunting it with the other mortarboarders. 
A college, you understand. A real college — mortar- 
boards — and Sherlingham, “near Oxford,” as the pros- 
pectus was careful to state. It was almost like going 
up to the University itself. 

There were the clothes to be purchased according 
to the sacred minimum of Sherlingham. So many 
suits of underclothing; so many nightshirts; so many 


62 


PASSION 


handkerchiefs and whatnot, all marked with my num- 
ber — 477. At least four hundred and seventy-seven 
boys — all mortarboarders and sons of gentlemen. My 
mother sparkled in anticipation; she crisped with 
pride; but not so much as her priggish son. “Sons 
of gentlemen.” Sherlingham, “near Oxford.” 

Under the stimulus of the classical prospectus, I be- 
lieve my father, incited thereto by my ambitious 
mother, had ideas about resurrecting the ghost of 
“private means,” so that as the son of “a professional 
gentleman” there might be no question about my ante- 
cedents. However, this sacrilegious attempt to throw 
down the barriers of caste came to nothing: my father 
had his qualms: and so I passed into Sherlingham 
hopelessly commercialised. 

The Head who received my mother and myself that 
night in September was a man with letters after his 
name, a Doctor of Divinity. I can see him now, 
partnering his Sahara-faced wife, with one cold, 
monocled, china-blue eye peering monstrous at me out 
of the gelatinous baby-pink face, as I tripped timor- 
ously amongst the ghosts of bread and butter and the 
eggshell teacups. I can hear him, in a “before the 
parent” burst of generosity, suggesting that I might 
like an egg, after my three hundred mile journey, and 
my mother, genteelly protestant, that really it was 
quite unnecessary — and can feel my heart choking 
under the hot tea at the approaching separation, that 
first-time separation, from my mother for whom I 
discovered new affections. 

And his Latin grace before and after, and after the 
grace : “I think we will leave mother and child together, 
Miriam — these are sacred moments.” 

And the nightmare of a dormitory, I who thought 


“FOR THE SONS OF GENTLEMEN” 63 


of sleep as a private thing, who would not sleep when 
others looked at me even as a little fellow. And the 
cold soaped boards, and the cold soaped matron with 
the horse-face. And the boys — the boys everywhere, 
not four hundred and seventy-seven of them, but some- 
thing over a hundred. I had fallen among the Greeks. 

I was on the “modern” side. That was practically 
segregated for the sons of “commercial gentlemen.” 
The “classical” was presumably for the sons of “pro- 
fessional gentlemen,” with nothing amateurish about 
them. 

In God’s name, what was that school — a school 
which however was no better and no worse than hun- 
dreds of other “public schools?” They taught us 
French and German — Latin and “Natural” Philosophy 
— shorthand and bookkeeping — chemistry and Eng- 
lish composition, stirred together with a score of other 
subjects, and an extraordinary exercise they called 
military drill, with the rudiments of “religion” thrown 
in as a makeweight. My English composition, in 
which I rode imagination on a loose rein, was charac- 
terised forbiddingly by the little tight-corked red- 
headed English master as being too florid in its periods 
and too fluent in its method, I being given to under- 
stand that floridity and fluency were anything but the 
hallmarks of gentledom, and generally, though indis- 
tinctly, that there was a gentlemanly way of writing 
as there was of speaking and eating. My imagination 
was in fact given a black eye. 

All this, however, left me indignantly undisturbed, 
for I recognised the hoof and claw of the grown-up. 

And they starved us — starved us meanly, ignobly. 
They ghosted the butter on the slabs of bread — “tar- 
tine” we called it. They gave us coffee in which the 


64 


PASSION 


strength of the liquid bore a curious relation to the 
mass of the grounds. They gave us resurrection pie ; 
something which we blasphemously said rose again on 
the third day and was full of dead bodies. Anyhow 
it stank. 

But they kept us clean — water cost nothing and soap 
not much more. They turned us out (some of us) in 
our mortarboards and Eton jackets. They herded us 
three times on each Sunday into the church, where we 
listened to Doctor Shamble read from the Old Testa- 
ment, his monocle moist at the affecting passages. 
Church also cost nothing. 

I can see that school now — hear the chimes of the 
bells in the old church coming through the frosty air 
of the December nights — which has made me hate 
church bells ever since. I can see the schoolmasters — 
poor, half-starved, under-clothed devils, babbling of the 
classics, and other things. The trimmings for the sons 
of professional gentlemen — the Smith Minor and 
Jones Major — the classical trimmings — the mortar- 
boards infrequent but in evidence. The code of school 
morals — the code of the public school — the code that 
made it the ultimate crime to “peach,” but a venal sin, 
something to be emulated, if one robbed an orchard or 
beat a boy insensible with keys and knotted ropes be- 
cause he had offended the school canons. The pre- 
posterous code which made the masters sternly forbid 
fighting and then, like the Levite, tongue in cheek, pass 
by on the other side if a fight were in progress: some- 
thing which amazed my poor little logical self the first 
time I saw it. The snobbery: the bounderishness : the 
pretences. 

But from out of that hurly-burly — that first night- 
mare of my life, there stand two things. One, the 


“FOR THE SONS OF GENTLEMEN” 65 


day where I had dared — I was a little prig I think 
I have said — to break the rules, the first of the only 
two occasions on which I did so, by speaking to a 
boy behind the raised lid of my desk, which for some 
reason unknown was regarded as a serious offence. 
The master — he was that little red-haired virulent man 
who told me that my English composition was too 
florid — said he would send us to the Doctor for cor- 
poral punishment. 

I knew the Head; he hated me; hated me malig- 
nantly. I knew that if he got me into his pulp hands 
he would beat me sick — I had once seen him beat 
another boy whom he disliked and had seen the lying 
pretence of justice and the swine-hearted revengeful- 
ness of his strokes. I remembered that he had insulted 
me before the school, taking the. opportunity of a public 
address to do so by referring to me as “that dirty 
little Irish pig” — I knew him. I know him to-day, and 
his like. 

It was not the beating I feared. It was the thought 
of being struck — pain — no not pain, but the bruising 
of nerve, the giving of pain, the beastliness of it. I 
was a boy of nerves, ridiculous, affected if you like. 
The other boys took their gruel like men. I was not a 
man in that sense; even then I was beginning to hate 
the grown-ups. But to me the thing was unthinkable. 
The monks had never struck me — never. It was not 
necessary. 

So I told him, pleadingly I believe — low and sure 
and quietly I know — that if I were struck I would 
not be responsible for the thing to follow — that I had 
never been struck in my life. That man was not 
clever — he was stupid — stupid in a sharp, ferrety way 
— but I can see his small blue wondering eyes fixed 


66 


PASSION 


on me, the long silent look, amazed but finally under- 
standing. And the snappy voice when he let us off — 
harsh, but to me musical as running water. I was 
grateful to that man then — I would have gone to the 
end of the world for him — and to-day I bless him and 
his red-haired angry underfed face. 

I was alone in that school, a loneliness by which 
that of Robinson Crusoe was a crowded silence. I 
was cut off from these boys as though I had come 
from Saturn instead of from an island three hundred 
miles away. Yet there were good boys there as I 
have occasion to remember, boys who tried to do the 
lonely Irish boy little kindnesses secretively — but there 
were others, and all the kindness in the world could 
not bridge from me to them. I was another breed — 
a logical, priggish, imaginative breed if you will — 
nothing careless and reckless about me. I was not a 
boy, but even then a man — not a fledgling man but an 
old man, with the heart of the child. 

In my Irish home I was a curious creation amongst 
the others, but there it was like living in the bosom 
of the soft Southwest wind. I was a superior rather 
contemptible prig, a superior person, a snob — the 
product of my upbringing. But I liked those Irish 
boys in my own way — I nearly loved one or two of 
them — and I would have come close to them if they 
would have let me . . . or if I could. Those things 
cannot be willed. 

Here it was living in a dead world, in the sunless 
wastes, in an atmosphere of fretful powder. I lived 
and moved and had my being separate and part. I 
shrank into myself. Even those sex promptings were 
sterilised in this atmosphere — for sex needs warmth, 


“FOR THE SONS OF GENTLEMEN'' 67 

companionship, and perhaps the better things of life — 
even vice may need virtue for its procreation. 

They tried to initiate me into the freemasonry of 
the schoolboy by getting me to fight other boys with 
whom I had no quarrel. I hated fighting. I hated 
bruising and wounding. I stood up, extraordinary 
mortal, before these boys, fourteen-years old as I was, 
and said I hated fighting and that we did not fight in 
Ireland unless we hated, and then we fought to a 
finish — dangerously, logically, thoroughly (the only 
fight I had had in my life was one in which I had to 
be dragged from my adversary whom I was strang- 
ling in comfortable unconsciousness of what I was 
doing), which drew shouts of derisive laughter. They 
pushed me against another boy — he pushed me back — 
but I could not strike him in cold blood. We fight in 
hot blood in Ireland. They said I was a coward — a 
funk — and left it there. They changed their minds 
afterwards. 

They sent me to Coventry, until they found that 
to be left alone was of all things that which I most 
desired. The luxury of eating, walking, sleeping in 
silence was not to last however. To say they made my 
life a burden is to say nothing — they made it a vital- 
ised, nerved thing, dragged out from moment to mo- 
ment — they did what only the boys at a public school 
united upon one end can do, something that the Holy 
Inquisition might have learned with advantage. 

Yet some of them withdrew from this thing. There 
was Braddock, the oldest boy in the school, a curious 
incursion, a young man of twenty-one who had a bent 
to revolver shooting. He befriended me as far as he 
was able, but even he could not infringe the school 
canons, the unbending concreted traditions of the 


68 


PASSION 


years for the handling of the boy who is not like other 
boys, boys broken into the conspiracy of the grown- 
ups. Even the masters, calculatingly unconscious of 
what was going on, could not do it. The boy is the 
only real, the only logical, Conservative. 

I had a slow temper — an inburning, whiteheated, 
quickbed. I was not angry with these boys at the 
commencement, only puzzled, anxious to explain, even 
to understand. But my dazement, under the ministra- 
tions of McCurdy, Dugdale & Co., gave way at last to 
something else. 

McCurdy was a tall, raw-boned Scotsman, a couple 
of years older than myself, with hard eyes of piercing 
blue-grey; Dugdale an hypertrophied hulk, with little 
eyes; the “Co.” a still smiling boy whose real name 
was I believe Evans, a boy with a curious protrusion 
at the back of his head, a slab of lower jaw, hanging, 
and soft brown ey^s which looked kindly (I have since 
seen the same eyes in a pathologist convicted of in- 
credible scientific cruelties). The first two, with “Co.” 
as an onlooker, had brought my torture to a fine art. 
Ignoble, spirit-breaking torture. 

Despair made me fertile. Many schemes ran through 
my brain— of boxing lessons, of wrestling lessons with 
bone-breaking as an accompaniment. This seemed 
puerile. The thing that was going on needed some- 
thing sharper, decisive. 

At this time I think my brain was a little turned — 
I was “cracked” as we say in Ireland. It must have 
been so, for I remember how coldly clear I saw every- 
thing, without passion as though I were a third person, 
looking on. 

I thrashed it out that they could not hang a boy of 
fourteen. I had never heard of a reformatory at this 


“FOR THE SONS OF GENTLEMEN” 69 

time, but neither the one thing nor the other could 
have stopped me. I was mad. Mad with bruising 
and brutality. Mad, not with the fear, but with the 
indecency of it all. I was conscienceless — I would have 
submerged the school without a pang. I hated them. 
Hated them with a black hate. 

There was a disused water-barrel on wheels in that 
school. It was across this barrel that the boys who 
had offended the graver school-canons were stretched 
and beaten with what were called euphemistically 
“blood-knots.” I had seen a boy once beaten raw for 
peaching. McCurdy, Dugdale & Co. had arranged it 
to a nicety. On the next half-holiday when the moni- 
tors and the masters — save the French master who did 
not count — would be away at a football match, I was 
to be taken to the quadrangle and apostatise before the 
whole school by saying: “Curse Ireland the land of 
cowards!” or be thrashed by my tormentors on the 
barrel until I did so. They had learned that I loved 
Ireland, a love which had only come to me in that 
school, had discovered it perhaps from the yellow- 
backed diary I kept. 

They told me what was in store for me, but I was 
no longer troubled. I was gloating. As happy as any 
warrior of. the Sagas before battle. I was fighting, 
not for myself, but for something vague, intangible — 
some principle. I suppose I felt myself a martyr and 
steeled with martyrdom, for my nature was to be 
shrinking, despite my frame and muscles. 

But I did not go to the quadrangle. They had to 
fetch me. 

I felt myself run out ignominiously with the big 
Scotsman holding my arm, my bad left arm, already 
swollen and bruised from past punishment — the Dug- 


70 


PASSION 


dale heaving me forward by the seat of my breeches, 
whilst Evans smiled nicely at the side. To-day I am 
glad to remember that out of the mass of faces perched 
high upon the walls of the quadrangle there came a 
low cry of “Shame! Shame!” but these were quickly 
stifled. 

They stood me, freed, with my back to the barrel, 
and drew back, leaving me isolated. And I, gloating, 
with the hard, friendly pressure of the revolver in my 
trouser's pocket which I had stolen from Braddock’s 
room. I have never been so happy, so riotously, 
furiously, quietly happy since. 

Dugdale was speaking. “Curse Ireland the land 
of cowards. Say it!” It came to me as from an 
immense distance — thin — puerile. He and the others 
had drawn their blood-knots from their pockets in 
anticipation. 

I do not remember putting my hand in my pocket 
for what I had there, but remember holding it levelled 
at Dugdale, who stared at me in incredible, laughable 
astonishment. “Swine — swine — swine !” “Swine — 
swine — swine!” I suppose that I was speaking — it 
was all I could say. “Swine — swine — swine !” 

That brute was brave enough — the bravest man is 
the man without imagination. He hung momentarily 
in the wind and then dashed in. 

I feared then for the first time — feared I should 
miss — I who had never fired a revolver in my life. 
But I did not miss. The thing seemed to go off itself 
— and he was down, writhing. There comes to me the 
affrighted, not fearing, faces about me. I was scream- 
ing — screaming “Swine — swine — swine !” threatening 
heaven and earth with my weapon. 

Again the thing had exploded, knocking a spurt of 


“FOR THE SONS OF GENTLEMEN" 71 


red dust from the brick wall. Then they broke, and I 
was alone with Dugdale on the ground, a red stain 
spreading from his hip. 

I meant to kill him, as God is my witness. I sprang 
on him and put the muzzle of the revolver against his 
skull as he lay half over on his face. Then all became 
dark. 

I told them, Shamble himself, that I regretted noth- 
ing. That I was only sorry the wound in his hip 
would not leave him crippled. And I meant it. 

They hushed it up for the sake of the school, but 
they put me in a room where I was locked up day and 
night. I was an animal — dangerous. Not a coward 
any longer, it seemed — but a criminal. 

But that finished me with Sherlingham and school 
and final polishing, and launched me into the maw of 
London. 




















































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PART II 


FEAR STREET 




VIII 


LONDON 

After the Sherlingham shooting, my mother, as I 
gathered from her letters frequent and intense, with 
my father laggard in the rear, regarded me as unfit for 
human society — at least as represented by a school 
for the sons of gentlemen. I gathered in fact that I 
was "no gentleman,” and the words "law and order” 
appeared rather more frequently in her communica- 
tions than was strictly necessary. As Dr. Shamble 
cordially agreed, I left Sherlingham College one De- 
cember night by stealth, and found myself and my 
glazed trunk on the road to London, with my ticket, 
twenty-one shillings in silver, some loose coppers, and 
a letter to my uncle Jeremiah — my father's brother. 

I cannot say I was cowed. I was triumphant. 
Shooting was ridiculously easy . . . and self-respect- 
ing, and, as I had already gathered through certain 
newspapers which recommended violent additions to 
the armed forces of Empire, settled all problems. My 
politics, hitherto nebulous, though in their fundaments 
conservative, began to crystallise themselves, and took 
a more definite tinge of red. I did not feel "Cainish.” 
This shooting had made me amazingly self-confident. 

At Bletchley Junction I had my first misgivings. It 
was in the waiting-room, a desolated hole as I think of 
it. London began to loom on me. London was a big 
place. It was a big place. 

75 


76 


PASSION 


By this time I was beginning to doubt the grown- 
ups, beginning to find them out, but in spite of this 
I was disappointed, I must say I was disappointed, in 
discovering the weakness of my mother’s character. 
She, so far, had been a woman to respect if not alto- 
gether to love, but she, the strong Englishwoman, with 
that firmness and coldness I had associated with the 
Anglo-Saxon characer, had failed me at the crisis of 
my life. She who should have backed me up, told 
Shamble that I was right, defied the Universe generally 
on my behalf, had backed “law and order” — Shamble, 
Christianity, and damnation. 

Like all children, I hated to find people out, having 
a pathetic belief in age and experience. I would walk 
all around a thing, deny the evidences of sense, put 
my head in the sands of illusion like the older ostriches, 
do anything not to have my faith in my elders broken. 
But I was always finding them out. I could stick my 
hard tousled head in the sands — I could not keep it 
there. Always something came behind to jog me erect 
again. 

It was wretched, but even in my wretchedness I had 
a tinge of hope, the thing that always came to me in 
my most desperate moments — and the child can be 
more desperate than any grown-up, for to him there 
is no future and no past. I felt I had touched bottom, 
and had the self-confidence born of desperation. I 
was breaking away from the umbilical cord of my 
mother. Had I known, I was breaking away from 
much more. 

Here was I, alone: there somewhere at the end of 
the steel ways along which I was rushing was London. 
As we ripped through the night pall, and I caught the 
snow-wastes outside, I could see it rearing itself out 


LONDON 


77 


of the surrounding desolation, saw it with its ram- 
parts, bastions, outworks. Saw squatting somewhere 
in its heart the thing that had sucked at my father, 
a slimy monster that now was sucking at me along 
the tentacles of white shimmering steel that I had 
seen stretching out from the Junction and that led 
behind the ramparts to the maw of the thing. 

Then splendid adventure held me to it — in the heart 
of the monster there were things to be done, prizes 
to be won . . . power. 

Before I knew, I was in the heart of it. About me 
ran twinkling lights — red lights, yellow lights, green 
lights — lights that glimmered and passed as though 
this thing had its eyes set everywhere. 

As I peered into the maw of this thing, when I left 
the terminus in the slime of the December night, all 
my satisfaction petered out into the foggy shroud 
about me. I felt myself, a juicy morsel, at the beak 
of the thing. I was engulfing already. 

For this thing that I had always conceived as silent, 
sucking, had a tense life of its own, a life that turned 
and churned itself about me, yeasty in the bowels of 
the thing, assimilating me into its digestive processes. 
About me swooshed the hansoms ; engines shrilled and 
snorted in the station behind me; whilst on the stone 
sets outside, the wheeled traffic roared. Out of all 
this intestinal movement one thing stands out in my 
memory — the chimneys of the dingy houses facing the 
station. I still see them merging into the yellow pall 
above them like the outposts of hell. 

From the hansom, faces streamed past me out of 
the fog. I saw “men as trees walking,” and as we 
turned into the Euston Road, the horse hunched itself 
like a cat, stood on end, and wheeled rapidly, whilst 


78 


PASSION 


over the edge of the cab apron a face stared into mine 
— that of a girl, a pallid, poor-looking, sweet-faced 
girl with a wisp of yellow-brown hair coming dankly 
across her carmined cheeks — a face enquiring and un- 
derstanding and startled. Above, the cabby blas- 
phemed — and the girl, the sweet-faced girl, burst into 
a volley of unknown filth — into a frightened stridency. 

It was my welcome to London. 


IX 


BIG BUSINESS 

I saw little in that ride through the London fogs, but 
remember drawing out into the less muddy atmosphere 
of North London with its interminable facades and 
porticoes, into that wilderness of genteel respectability, 
Finsbury Park, where after a certain amount of pere- 
grination we found ourselves before “The Cedars’’ 
in the Prince Consort Road. 

My uncle Jerry was standing in the ormolu draw- 
ing-room, on the model of the Albert Memorial in 
Kensington Gardens, looking at me as he always did 
on his visits to Ireland, bewildered, with the two wisps 
of hair sticking up from his high bony head, his grey 
eyes, the soft grey of his native country, a little staring, 
with the two pin-points of black in the pupils. My 
aunt Maud, a portentous person of something over 
five feet, who had as far as possible framed her deport- 
ment upon an adventitious likeness to Queen Victoria, 
stood a trifle in advance of him in her sausage rolls 
and black bombazine, ungraciously receptive. 

During the chilly evening that followed, my cousins, 
sulky and indifferent to the stranger within the gates, 
dropped in from anywhere and everywhere. They 
looked at me much as they would have looked at me 
had I been placed behind bars — as an explosive animal 
79 


80 


PASSION 


likely to go off unbeknownst. I even heard Gladys, 
the beauty of the family and a pretty, juvenile imita- 
tion of her mother, in the hall appeal to the others in 
a stage whisper to come and have a look at “the Wild 
Irishman.” 

The atmosphere I knew. It was Sherlingham over 
again, with my uncle as a sort of stranded antedeluvian 
animal, something like Noah when the flood had sub- 
sided, wondering how the devil he had got there and 
why he was a hemp merchant in the City of London 
and where his wife and eight children had sprung 
from. He had always looked like that. 

To my surprise I was taken upstairs by my uncle 
himself to wash my hands, for Uncle Jerry had always 
had a puzzled idea of his own dignity and a suitable 
horror for his own country and countrymen, of whom 
he spoke collectively as “the dirty Irish.” It was 
whilst I was blushingly engaged in my ablutions that 
I discovered I was, not a hero as I had fondly imag- 
ined, but a pariah. . . . 

“You will remember you are in London — a civilised 
city . . . and that I have a reputation to maintain 
. . . no shootings here, you know, boy . . . where 
there are shootings there are also hangings — he who 
lives by the sword will also die by it.” It was my 
uncle’s old biblical touch: he still kept a sort of des- 
perate strangle-hold on religion. 

Under my uncle’s disjointed staccato my heart sank. 
Rebel against society though I was, I had not bar- 
gained upon “taking on” my uncle — and London. 
That was a bit too much of a good thing. I had been 
prepared to fight Shamble and slaughter Dugdale, but 
I was friendly at heart ; I didn’t want to fight the whole 
British nation and it was rapidly coming to me that 


BIG BUSINESS 81 

this was the task I had unconsciously set myself out 
to perform. 

“He who lives by the sword will also die by it,” he 
repeated sententiously, and then after a moment . . . 
“even though Mandrill doesn't think so.” 

“Mandrill.” Who on earth was Mandrill? The 
name stuck in my head or my throat. “Mandrill.” 
To-day it seems strange that the time ever was when 
I did not know the name, the name even then booming 
through the Anglo-Saxon business world, the name 
which has given to the language the adjective “Man- 
drillian.” 

I was not long kept in doubt. After a night in a 
bed of a cold pinched cleanliness which to me at least 
was unhomely and forbidding, I was informed by my 
uncle, who cultivated a certain impressive silence, that 
I was to be taken to Mandrill’s after breakfast and 
that “I was to mind my p’s and q’s or I should get 
bitten.” I remember that the way he spoke puzzled 
me again. It had a sort of “Christians to the lions!” 
sound about it. 

I did not realize until I was actually passing down 
the cul-de-sac of Golgotha Place and up the shallow 
worn steps of a building with GOLGOTHA HOUSE 
across the lintel, that I was about to take my jump 
off into life. School had finished for me I knew, and 
my mother had written vaguely about my uncle Jere- 
miah “seeing to me,” but that individual, stalking 
solemnly, and as I thought, not unapprehensively, by 
my side, had vouchsafed nothing to me, save that I 
was to see Mandrill and “to mind my p’s and q’s or I 
should get bitten.” Such was my introduction to the 
brassy bosom of high finance. 

We passed through the swing-doors guarded by two 


82 


PASSION 


brassbound commissionaires dressed in a crimson, 
gold, and black uniform, not gaudy, but gloomily im- 
pressive — powerful, rather fierce - looking men but 
good-humoured in a bluff official way, and after pass- 
ing an enamelled plaque on which in gold letters was 
inscribed: “Business IS Good!” found ourselves in 
a vast bank-like office with a lofty roof shot here and 
there by glass skylights. Around the four sides ran 
a counter, brassbound like the commissionaires, behind 
which men and women and boys, the men immaculate 
in frock-coat, and the boys washed and brushed to 
dazzlement, were working in a sort of frenzy. On one 
of the long red-leathered seats before the counter was 
a well-dressed rather anxious-looking man in a grey 
frock coat, a seat or two away from him a stout com- 
fortable lady in black, carrying a black reticule in her 
cotton-gloved hands ; whilst another man, a little shop- 
keeperish-looking man, walked quickly up and down, 
looking hungrily through the brass rails as he did so. 
At the side, a man sat in a sort of pulpit desk survey- 
ing the whole scene. He was a lean, ferrety-eyed man 
— a sort of watcher I thought him, though as I found 
out afterwards he was Mandrill’s secret messenger 
and was nicknamed “The Jackal” in the City. Nobody 
looked at us. 

Typewriters were clicking everywhere; telephones 
were buzzing and ringing, whilst over the place hung 
a sort of buzzing strain like that of an overtautened 
wire, a strain which seemed to come from inside my 
head. Near me, two sharp-looking youths worked 
two ungainly typewriters — at least I thought them 
typewriters, but afterwards found they were calculating 
machines, just invented. A little beyond them a young 
man, his glossy hat high on the back of his head, and 


BIG BUSINESS 


83 


as I noted, a twisted pearl sticking dangerously from 
his silk tie, was, apparently insanely, speaking con- 
fidentially into a sort of trumpet arrangement fixed 
to a revolving cylinder, whilst near him a young girl, 
with cups screwed over her ears and attached to a 
similar turning cylinder was typewriting from some in- 
visible dictator. My first impression was that I had 
got into a madhouse, but an enormously impressive 
madhouse, passionated with something that I had met 
before — all impregnated with an earthy scent that 
roused in me half-slumbering memories. 

Bewildered as I was, there came to me something 
incongruous about the place. All this mass of glitter- 
ing machine was set in an old-world setting — the walls 
in old-panelled oak, and despite the glass let into the 
roof, a sort of gloom over all as though the nineteenth 
century had run back into a mediaeval monastery, as 
indeed I found afterwards to be the case, for the owner 
had ruthlessly broken down partitions, built in here, 
taken out there, in this Golgotha House which had 
once been a Carmelite monastery, and which in the 
City was known commonly as “The Cave.” 

As I came to myself, I found myself looking into 
a glass cage in which I found a long thin boy with 
big flapping ears and eyes that snapped like noiseless 
windows, who stood before us in the crimson gold and 
black which was the uniform of the officials of the 
place, before him a row of brightly polished tubes, be- 
hind him an enamelled text: “More Haste — more 
Speed !” one of many other devices which spotted the 
office, a “speeding-up” idea which as I afterwards 
learnt Mandrill had borrowed from the Americans. 

My uncle, now slightly apologetic, murmured to the 
boy who stood there, his great ears expectant: “Will 


84 


PASSION 


you say Mr. Jeremiah Tempest and nephew ?” The 
boy shut the glass door he had opened in the cage, 
bent down, put a black disc to his ear, said something 
into another disc, put his head out, and snapped: “Mr. 
Mandrill’s private room” to another boy, a short 
stumpy edition of himself, who had mushroomed un- 
der our feet, who said: “Follow, please,” and walked 
us into a lift which gaped for us, facing us the usual 
enamelled text: “If you don’t go up, you must go 
down.” It shot us up, frightening me very much, for 
it was my first lift, and we found ourselves walking 
down a cloistered corridor panelled in the old oak 
that with the smell of earth, pervaded the place, past 
doors of cold indecent glass which showed us vistas 
of clerks and typewriters, now more liberally be- 
sprinkled with girls, all working fiercely. Down an- 
other corridor to the right and facing us a great oak 
door, without glass, which the boy opened without 
knocking, precipitating us into the biggest room and 
the biggest man I had ever seen. 

It was the room I was afterwards to know as “the 
Den.” The lofty cathedral-like place looked more 
like a museum than an office, the museum of man as 
a fighting animal. Around the walls hung weapons 
of the Stone Age with casts in miniature of prehis- 
toric animals — even then I noticed a plaster cast of a 
fossil tiger, a megacephalous brute, underneath which 
was inscribed: “Old Sabretooth.” Australian boomer- 
angs, with swords, battle-axes and maces, Asiatic, 
African, and European, gave place as one passed the 
length of the wall, to arquebuses and horse-pistols. 
Here a Greek cestus hung side by side with a curiously 
formed knuckle-duster and a pair of modern boxing 
gloves over which stood the inscription as I read later: 


BIG BUSINESS 


85 


“The 4-oz. gloves worn by Champion Jeffers when he 
knocked out Crax for the World’s Heavyweight Cham- 
pionship at Salada City, September 25, 1891.” 

As you came round the door and cleared the heavy 
Japanese lacquer screen with its golden dragons chas- 
ing one another on a black ground, Snider guns gave 
place to Martini-Henrys with their ammunitions above 
them, whilst on a side-table stood the model of the first 
machine-gun. Photographs and models of monster 
guns completed the place, whilst around the room ran 
a fresco inscribed : “The Duel Throughout the Ages,” 
showing Stone Men and slingers, net -throwers and 
swordsmen, boxers and men with pistols engaged in 
single combat, the whole thing being completed by a 
fight between two battleships. 

But this I saw only in a blur : all these things I lost 
in the bellow which had gone out the moment the door 
was opened. 

The man that straddled the great white bearskin 
before the open fireplace where logs burned instead 
of coal, was Mandrill, of course. I felt I would have 
known him anywhere. 

“Bring him out! Let’s have a look at the young 
murderer !” 

The voice came out of the cavernous mouth filled 
with the strong yellow teeth. He stood there, his 
sinewy legs draped beautifully in some striped grey 
trousering, finishing in black patents which stood out 
against the rug, his frock-coat clothing him like a skin, 
the arch of his chest pushing out the black satin tie 
with the emerald in it. I suppose it was because I was 
so confused that I took in his lower extremities first. 

The face was clean-shaven, but the eyes, eyes of 
angry green, peered abysmally from under the furry, 


86 


PASSION 


heavily boned brows. The forehead, which gave an 
impression of lowness, though it was really big and 
well-developed, went up and back curiously into the 
hair of reddish tow. The back of the head was strong 
and straight — in contrast to the front face where the 
nostrils sprawled hugeously upwards from the down- 
ward hook of the great curved nose and the arms 
which curved themselves slankly down his sides. 

“Let’s have a look at the young murderer.” 

It came to me that the green eyes were fixed on me, 
that the cosmic voice was incredibly concerning itself 
with me. I was shy; I blushed redly as I had always 
the habit — but I was angry too. Something in the 
man or his greeting irritated me. 

I was too angry to be frightened. But all the same 
I was frightened. I did not want to be called a mur- 
derer ; so I looked this man back in the eyes — my own 
eyes as green and fierce though not so good-humoured 
as his own, challenging him. But I preferred him to 
those sleek respectables in “The Cedars.” There was 
something downright about him. 

“I am no murderer,” I said simply. It was my 
introduction. 

The man looked at me, and then at my uncle, who 
stood horrified under his lee. Then back at me. 

“The Celt for ever!” he burst out. “See that, Tem- 
pest? Young fire-eater! He’s the man for Big Busi- 
ness.” He had taken my ear in his hairy paw and 
pinched it. 

As I learned afterwards, Mandrill had been asked 
by my uncle Jerry, with whom he had some infrequent 
business relations (he had I discovered later intro- 
duced a group of the smaller investors to the Cave) 
to take me into Golgotha House. Mandrill, like the 


BIG BUSINESS 


87 


enquiring animal he was, wanted to know all about 
me and asked the reason of my leaving school so 
young. My uncle, who regarded all fighting as dis- 
orderly (he was that anomaly, a law-abiding Irish- 
man), had diffidently and with strained conscience told 
the great man about the shooting, regarding it as all 
up with my chances, but not keeping back anything. 
As I was to find out, people were afraid to keep things 
back from Mandrill. 

But the great man had seized on the thing, insisted 
upon seeing me himself, and now as I stood before 
him made me tell him, diffidently and not at all boast- 
fully, of the shooting, for by now, under the atmos- 
phere of the place, my courage and confidence had 
evaporated and I was getting what we used to call at 
Gherlingham rather “fed up.” He was anatomically 
minute about the shooting and listened to me in a sort 
of explosive silence, bursting into ejaculations as my 
recital interested him, his voice tailing off under ex- 
citement into a sort of whispering snarl and the scalp 
over his forehead twitching curiously from time to 
time. 

I suppose I was, not altogether disingenuously, 
apologetic, and assured him that. nothing of the kind 
would take place at Golgotha House if I were engaged 
— that, so to speak, murder was not a habit with 
me. . . . 

“We don't apologise in the City Jungle my boy — 
here it's a case of the survival of the fittest." He 
had turned to his bell and had pressed the button. A 
boy appeared. 

He turned us out neck and crop. This extraordinary 
man was seated at his table before we had left the 
room, bewildered — at least I was, nothing could dis- 


88 


PASSION 


turb the melancholy equanimity of my uncle as he 
walked by my side the grey vista of Golgotha Place, 
and told me in awe-ful admiration — the admiration 
of Little business for Big as I came to know it — that 
my fortune was as good as made if I minded my p's 
and q's . . . for Mandrill paid princely salaries to 
those “who were smart enough to keep their jobs" he 
added. “He's the man for Big Business." 

It was my introduction to “Big Business." Those 
words like the name Mandrill, went round and round 
in my brain. “Big Business. . . . Mandrill. . . . 
Mandrill. . . . Big Business." 


X 


THE CAVE 

Instead of waiting for the beginning of a week, I 
was to be pitchforked into Big Business at 9 on the 
following morning, a Friday, for Mandrill, who was 
a staunch supporter of the Church by Law Established, 
and who turned its maxims to suit his own peculiar 
brand of faith, boasted that he never did things “de- 
cently and in order” as the prayerbook had it. 

On the following morning, after a nightmarish 
sleep, from the top of the Green Lanes tram, my head 
buzzing with directions and slightly fuddled, I saw 
the words “Business — Big Business” taking form 
about me. In Moorgate Street, up past the Bank, I 
heard the thrash and the roar of Business — Big Busi- 
ness, stamped out, rolled out, from the hoofs of the 
ironshod horses, from the turning of the bus wheels, 
from the hurrying scurrying myriads, sweeping on- 
ward like scared cattle, who beat the pavements about 
me. 

When I walked down Golgotha Place and entered 
the swing-doors that gaped for me; as I caught the 
alphabetical index with its strings of names and the 
word “Copper” dancing in and out of them; and 
passed the crimsoned guardians, rigid, in place, I saw 
facing me in the hall in gold letters: “Business IS 
Good.” There it was. “Business.” “Big Business.” 

89 


90 


PASSION 


Dogmatic. Compelling. Some time after when I had 
begun to find my feet in the Cave, I ventured to ask 
the meaning of this cryptic device. The clerk whom 
I addressed stared at me and said: "Business is good, 
isn’t it — do you think it is ever bad?” There was 
nothing more to be said. 

My legs shook under me as I passed the guardians 
of the portal and caught the earthy taste of the place 
in my mouth, the taste you find in newly turned earth, 
only that it also smelt like the waiting hall of a rail- 
way station — with something sweet in it that took me 
in the throat. It was a tangible, almost a chewable 
thing, that smell, at times, especially in moist weather. 
It came I believe from the age of the place mingled 
with the scent of the new prospectuses, piles of which 
always stacked the counters and which were to be had 
for the taking away. I always think of the Cave, of 
London, as that scent, and it brought back to me that 
other earthy scent of which I have spoken, brought it 
back to me confusedly, mixed it up in a curious way 
with the little gold god, with something pungent and 
intense and sickly sweet — gave it the passion of strug- 
gle and of that other thing. 

This scent and the place itself so confused me that 
I might have stood on the wrong side of the mahogany 
counter until closing time had I not been adjured by 
the crimson and gold imp in the glass case: "You can’t 
stand there all day you know. No litter here !” And 
then, as a sort of sulky concession to inefficiency: 
"What d’ye want anyhow!” I told him, diffidently, 
that I wanted to see Mr. Mandrill. 

He was human. This doubled him up ; threw him 
into a sort of ecstatic convulsion like the imp in the 
glass bottle. But he set his infernal machinery in 


THE CAVE 


91 


motion, and after a time I found the grey-eyed bulging 
headed boy under my elbow — a diminutive keen little 
familiar it was — and so I was conducted along the 
counter and into the back-blocks that ramified behind 
the hall with the glass in the roof, into a recessful sort 
of room where, over an American roll-top desk, under 
the glare of a greenshod electric light despite the quar- 
ter over nine in the morning, there crouched a head, 
with a bald patch in the back of it. 

I stood there, my new bowler uncertain in my hand. 
My familiar had vanished. I tried to imagine the 
etiquette of address to a bald patch. I was still think- 
ing over it when the patch turned, showing the pale, 
strained-faced, young-old man, a little puffy about the 
cheeks and jaw, who took me in hand without any 
introductory ceremony and told me in that sharp, 
snappy way of his, that I was his slave and that my 
business in life from that day henceforward was to 
carry out his behests — “Nothing else, mind you, Tem- 
pest . . . and the sooner you learn the ropes the bet- 
ter .. . we take no excuses here.” His thin curved 
nose pecked from between his little glittering eyes to 
emphasise his periods. He pointed backwards and 
over his head vaguely to the now familiar inscription, 
this time in French: “Qui s’ excuse — s’ accuse.” I had 
learned enough French to decipher it and very proud 
I would have felt had it not been for the place and the 
man. 

As I discovered afterwards, the pale young man, 
whose name was Hawkling, dyed his hair to keep 
abreast of the times and of Mandrill. (They were 
the same thing.) He was holding on to his job with 
his false teeth and dyed hair, and, as I learned quite 
early from one of the pages — that thin lop-eared boy. 


92 


PASSION 


Smeeter, had been many years in the place, that he 
was not 4 'making good” in his present post, and that 
the job was open to me if I could snatch it from him: 
as for him, he was going to try for a clerkship and 
was attending night classes. There was no favour in 
the Cave ; it was dog eat dog with new animals always 
coming in. The "Dominate or be Damned” motto on 
the walls was very literally applied and the younger 
were always snapping at the heels of the older till they 
could pull them down. 

And so Hawkling, keen but weary-eyed, white-faced 
Hawkling, a little blousy and blown but trying to keep 
it up, was on a raw edge with all the world and so 
put a fine edge on everyone about him. At heart, as 
I was to find out later, he was not unkindly, but the 
Cave had made him into a sort of civilised prehistoric 
man ; bewildered but snappy. He had a wife and three 
small children somewhere up Paddington way, though 
most of Mandrill’s men were unmarried — they hadn’t 
time to fall in love, and when they did they kept it to 
themselves. 

Not that it mattered much about Hawkling’s age — 
whatever that was. "Too old at forty!” which in the 
nineties was beginning to be talked about and to which 
a well-known professor had given the halo of his name 
was something that Mandrill laughed at: "There’s no 
wolf like the old wolf” he used to say, and if the older 
men could keep up the pace and hold back the younger, 
well and good. But Hawkling looked a curious breed 
amongst all those snarly hungry-eyed men. Even old 
Pippin, the grey-eyed badger who was one of the book- 
keepers, looked as if he had more bite and stay and 
grip than he, and despised him in his own furtive, 
good-humoured way. 


THE CAVE 


93 


Hawkling took me up and flung me neck and crop 
into the machinery of the Cave. Strange voices buzzed 
in my ears from mysterious telephones — instruments 
as foreign to me as the porphyry vases that whisper 
at the Louvre. It was I, not the messages I shut in, 
who was put into the pneumatic tubes and hurled to 
the four quarters of Golgotha House. Buzzers were 
constantly going off like enraged bees from the lady 
operators who worked the central switchboard which 
hung the whole humming place together in a network 
of wires; and I found that Mandrill was even talking 
about direct communication with Paris — he would 
have had it with Mars if that were possible and if 
Mars were capable of doing business, big business, 
with extensions to the rest of the solar system and a 
switchboard somewhere in space. 

In the intervals I discovered dimly that Mr. Hawk- 
ling’s department was the Prospectus Department, 
though Hawkling himself was not only in charge of 
this department but also was Secretary of two or three 
copper companies. It was his business and that of 
his staff to prepare data in connection with the pros- 
pectuses that streamed out from the Cave to an ex- 
pectant world, and for some reason un fathomed to 
get and file in great mahogany cupboards copies of 
every new prospectus which appeared in that day of 
hurtling limited liability. His department had also 
to make certain notes upon and extracts from these 
prospectuses, some of them those long grey ghosts I 
knew so well — others great black and white fellows, 
bold and staring, with strings of figures that made me 
feel wretchedly unimportant. For these I was de- 
spatched into gilt-edged Banks — up into gloomy solici- 
tors’ offices — into gorgeous Corporations where there 


94 


PASSION 


reigned the Pax Britannica — into stockbrokers' offices 
behind Throgmorton Street where there was the same 
atmosphere as the Cave, but meagrer, more hectic. 

I cannoned from policeman to policeman — fell out 
of one office into another — in this city which was as 
strange to me as Babylon: ever before me: “we take 
no excuses here," and, more faintly: “qui s’ excuse 
s’ accuse.” 

I was thrown about like an indiarubber ball that 
morning. I was insulted. I was bullied in that at- 
mosphere by the smallest in the place, by the boy of 
the day before yesterday, even by Smeeter. Big as I 
was, I was helpless in the Cave. A pistol would not 
settle that business — that BIG business — it would take 
a firing platoon or a Maxim gun: perhaps something 
more. 

And so I was taken into the Cave and lost in its 
ramifications, knowing as much of its machinery as 
though I had fallen into a marine engine. What the 
business of the Cave was and what Mandrill did I 
knew no more than I believe did the majority of his 
army of clerks. I doubt whether he himself really 
always knew. He was part of the machine which he 
had created. 

I had had vague ideas about befriendment by the 
great man after that first day's visit with my uncle, 
but from that day until that other in the then distant 
future, Mandrill took no more notice of me than if 
I was on Mars. In a word, I was lost — lost in Big 
Business. 


XI 


£: s: d 

Mandrill's cashier, a high-fronted bald-faced hair- 
less man who sat behind his gilded grille like a pelican, 
pondering unutterable things, pushed out to me at the 
end of each week the sum of ten shillings, which was 
two shillings better than the city average for a be- 
ginner. This man, whom we called “The 'Oof-bird,” 
but whose name was really Crosbill, initiated me sol- 
emnly into the elaborate bonus system, following Man- 
drill's axiom that “the nearest way to a man’s brain 
is through his pocket,” applicable to each department 
and sub-department, by which, as he informed me 
portentously, “your income can be indefinitely supple- 
mented, Tempest;” which conjured golden visions until 
Smeeter, in his own words, “took the gilt off the 
gingerbread” by telling me that “it might mean any- 
fink from a tanner to five bob a week extra, or nuffink.” 
Smeeter's night-school had its limitations. 

This bonus system turned upon the apportioned 
profits of the departments after all expenses had been 
deducted. The 'Oof-bird, who was a sort of calculat- 
ing machine, employed an elaborate system of calcula- 
tion to determine the departmental profit to a fraction 
— it was the common report that he dreamed fractions 
95 


96 


PASSION 


— and every employee in the place, even the pages, were 
apportioned to some department and could share in 
the benefits, so that every unit had an interest in the 
business — were, in fact, “partners” with Mandrill. 

Thus, Mandrill provided Secretary and office accom- 
modation for the scores of companies (chiefly copper 
mines) which strewed the indicator in the passage, 
and so each unit of his little mob of Secretaries could 
draw a handsome bonus according to the half-yearly 
calculation, and in addition there was a fixed per- 
centage paid for all capital introduced into the business. 

I found one inflexible rule, that “the labourer was 
worthy of his hire when he had made good” (Mandrill 
loq.). There was no underpaying in the Cave for the 
man who lifted himself out of the ruck of the others, 
through plenty of “drive” and overwork. For the ruck 
however there was no money — it was all work and 
very little pay. Expenses were constantly being “cut,” 
two men’s work being done by one if possible. Thus, 
a man who thought he could do his own and another 
man’s work said so, and the other man might be 
pushed out ; but occasionally the biter was bit, for the 
other man, if considered more efficient, was retained 
and his aggressor “fired.” 

Mandrill or the ’Oof-bird were always open to ideas 
for cutting, for which a percentage was paid upon 
the amount saved if the suggestion were adopted, but 
for all ideas a fixed sum of a guinea was paid whether 
used or not, though as Smeeter said: “It isn’t healthy 
to spring too many ideas that aren’t used. If you 
do you are apt to get it in the neck.” There was a 
legend current about a youngster, Jerkins, who had 
put forward three suggestions on his first day in the 


£:S:D 


97 


Cave, and in the evening received his three guineas, 
plus ten shillings in lieu of a week’s notice, being told 
quite nicely that he need not trouble to come again. 

“He cut hisself with his own sharpness — ’e did,” 
remarked Smeeter sententiously when he told me 
about it. 

Even the cutthroat competition at Golgotha House 
was magnificent and thorough. There was nothing 
pettifogging about the place. As Mandrill boasted: 
“we have the Big Idea.” 

Men were free to come and go as they liked so long 
as they did their work. If a Secretary wished to 
come at midday instead of 9 — or work through the 
night in the Cave, he could do so ... so long as he 
justified himself and his department. And there was 
no spying, unless the Jackal, whose red-rimmed eyes 
never seemed to see anything, did it. 

The openings in the Cave, of which it was said 
that every office-boy carried a gilt-edged contract in 
his pocket, were eagerly sought. The big openings, 
the big money, and especially the Big Idea of the place 
were a lodestone that drew the smartest men, or those 
who thought they were the smartest, from Mandrill’s 
competitors. 

My ten shillings a week of course could not keep 
me in London, and my father and mother supplemented 
it by another five shillings and astonished me by the 
new note of parsimony which entered into their corre- 
spondence on the subject, for they had never been 
“near” in money matters. I still lived with my uncle, 
who, despite his prosperity as an alderman of the City 
of London, and a certain Lord Mayorishness and real 
turtle hanging to the skirts of his frock coat, and 


98 


PASSION 


those long grey prospectuses that stuck from it, took 
five shillings a week for my room and five shillings 
for breakfast and a nondescript meal called tea-dinner, 
with entire urbanity. “As a matter of principle, John 
. . . not because I wish to do it . . . training . . . 
efficiency/’ he murmured vaguely. They were my 
uncle’s great words — “training — efficiency.” He was 
the sort of man, who without either, believed the 
Sphinx could be taught to sit up and do stunts effi- 
ciently, with training. 

This tea-dinner was a sketchy meal with a lot of 
tea and very little dinner, at which we were all sup- 
posed to sit down, though the attendance, like the 
appetites, was variable, as my cousins in the City dined 
there in the middle of the day, whilst my aunt and 
female cousins, who as ladies never did anything, 
appeared to live on snacks. 

By this time I was a long, gawky, growing boy; 
very bony; a boy not so priggish as I had been; be- 
ginning to feel the shadow of responsibility which was 
gradually hooding me in the twilight of the Cave. 

I was bewildered there. I had the knack of making 
mistakes — curious “Irish” mistakes — a queer way of 
doing things because I had a queer, or a different, way 
from the others of looking at them. I found it im- 
possible to act blindly upon instruction — I had to see 
a thing in all its bearings — to “understand” it— -even 
that “Copper” which, dominating all things in Gol- 
gotha House, was supposed to be omnipotently above 
all understanding ; and so I lost in efficiency and speed. 

And I was sensitive in a ridiculous thin-skinned 
Irish way. Hawkling, badgered from pillar to post, 
threatened me daily, though I am now inclined to 


£: S: D 


99 


think rather liked me — as far as he dared. But hang- 
ing over him was the Damoclean sword of dismissal, 
with the vision of his wife and children in the house 
up Paddington way in the background. Poor devil; 
he couldn’t help himself. None of them could. Not 
even Mandrill. 

My bewilderment increased with the shortening 
days of autumn. I had blundered through the hot 
summer. At my uncle’s, I, who had always been 
taught to regard myself as a person of importance in 
the world, was treated as a pariah, as an incipient 
murderer. My cousins ignored me. They did not 
tease or harry me — they knew better, for even the 
drilling of the Cave could not whittle away the raw 
edges of my temper, but they let me alone as a partially 
tamed but uncertain animal. At school that was a 
luxury; somehow here in London it was other. In 
the Cave itself, I was one only of a crowd, known 
only to Hawkling, Smeeter, and half a dozen others. 
I was simply “Hawkling’s boy” — an ill-considered 
trifle. 

And then apart from this shadow of the Cave that 
seemed to be settling about me, there were other 
things, trifles in themselves, but which, together, 
seemed overwhelming. When I had come from Sher- 
lingham I had a best suit — an Eton jacket, vest and 
grey trousers; with a second suit, doubtful; and a 
third without any doubt whatever. The Eton jacket 
I found could not be worn in the face of the City 
canons — “I was swanking it a bit too thick,” Hawk- 
ling had said, whilst Smeeter and even the commis- 
sionaires were ribald. That left only the trousers, so 
I had had to fall back upon my second best, with an 


100 


PASSION 


occasional change to my best trousers, because my 
mother, who seemed to get closer as the months ran 
on, said I would have to wait until the autumn for a 
new jacket and vest to go with the Eton trousers. 

That second suit — it was greeney-brown like Irish 
heather — was becoming impossible, especially in the 
crutch, for it was the kind of stuff in which the coat 
always wears out the trousers. A superior servant at 
my uncle’s with a wispish cap on her head had deigned 
or disdained to mend it, but now it was past mending 
and I had to sit with my long legs close together 
\mder the low table in Hawkling’s room, which left 
me dreadfully, foolishly sensitive as always; for 
Hawkling’s eye, wandering, uncertain, seemed to bore 
through the very wood of the table, though God knows 
where his thoughts really were. 

There were other things also I needed — collars (my 
Eton collars were useless, I wanted a stand-up) and 
a new tie instead of my little black silk bows — whilst 
so far as my boots were concerned, I was nearly on 
the uppers. I wore my Eton suit on Sundays but was 
beginning to loom gigantic through the sleeves and 
legs so that even the promised jacket and vest I feared 
would come too late. 

This thing would not have mattered at home, not 
even so much at Sherlingham, but I found that shab- 
biness was the unforgivable sin in the City, certainly 
in Golgotha House where everybody looked smart and 
well set up. Smeeter it is true said they took it out 
of their stomachs to put it on their backs, an anatomi- 
cal proceeding to me cryptic and impossible. 

Here I give a list of my weekly expenses as I kept 
them in that little yellow-backed diary : 


£: S: D. 


101 


Breakfast and “tea-dinner” at “The Cedars”.. 5s. 

Bedroom at “The Cedars” 5s. 

Tram fares from Finsbury Park to Moorgate 
Street, both ways, at 4d. a day. (Note — I 
saved 2d. a day by walking the first tram 
stage at either end 2s. 

Laundry : 1 shirt, y 2 undershirt, 1 pair of socks, 

1 handkerchief, 3 collars (the half undershirt 
is explained by the fact that I wore only one 
a fortnight and despised underpants, and 


sometimes I used 2 handkerchiefs if I had 

a cold) , Os. lOd. 

Lunch in the City at 3d. (a roll, butter, and a 
hot glass of milk), except Saturday, which 
was my treat day, when I sometimes spent 
8d. at an alamode boiled beef house (say) . . Is. lid. 

14s. 9d. 

That left me 3d. a week to play with. It is true 
that when I was short, for with all the will in life I 
could not keep down to the exact 14s. 9d., I walked 
one or even both ways, following the tram lines, but 
I soon found that this wore my boots out at an alarm- 
ing rate despite Mr. Blakey’s adventitious aid. It is 
also true that I often, more often than not perhaps, 
did without lunch following the advice of the Cave to 
take it out of your stomach and put it on your back, 
but this self-denial was often followed by bursts of 
which I was guiltily ashamed. (I had tried to get 
them at my uncle’s to put me up a piece of bread and 
butter, but I was ashamed to eat it in the Royal Ex- 
change before the beadles — one of them had looked 
superciliously at the piece of soapy-brown paper.) 

I was a growing boy with an abnormal appetite. At 
my uncle’s I was allowed to stuff myself with the 
porridge, but any attempts on the butter or bacon 


102 


PASSION 


were met with frigid disapproval from the pale high 
brows of my aunt. Still the oatmeal, upon which I 
had been reared in Ireland, was all to the good, but 
it was to me a balloon food which blew me out at 
the time and left me hungry soon after. By 12 I was 
something short of a maniac for food, but had to hold 
out till 1.30 when I was given a whole hour for lunch. 

Now, even when I had the 3d. in my pocket, how- 
ever absurd it sounds, I was too shy to enter an A.B.C. 
shop. Many and many a time I have walked up and 
down before that delectable branch in Walbrook de- 
vouring the rich sultanas and madeiras in imagination, 
afraid to face the beauties inside, who in their white 
aprons and respectable black looked too respectable 
for anything, certainly too respectable to serve me 
with threepennyworths — they had that early widowed 
look of the Aerated Bread Company waitress. 

I tried to pretend that I was waiting for a friend 
if one of them caught sight of me through the window 
and laughed — there was an aerated damsel in particu- 
lar, freckled and demure, whose laugh made me des- 
perate. Not that they were really that sort — they 
were much less flippant than the ladies of another saucy 
tea-shop then rising on the restaurant horizon under 
the Hebraic auspices of a sort of restaurant Mandrill 
who was eating up his competitors like hot cakes. 

Even when I got inside and asked for my roll and 
butter and glass of milk, I blushed, not to the roots 
of my hair, but to those of my being, my tongue clave 
to my mouth, and sometimes even, I could not bring 
myself to ask for hot milk, which I had been taught 
to regard as more nutritious than cold, but simply 
said “milk” in a voice as faint as a milkmaid’s, for 
fear of complications over the “hot.” 


£: S: D 


103 


This being so, the tea-dinner at the Cedars, in which 
devitalised white bread with a skimping of butter and 
plenty of tea, which I am bound to say was good, 
were the chief ingredients, with sometimes a bit of 
cold meat which I wolfed — was irritating. When I 
had eaten as much as I could without indecency, I 
would climb to my little room under the roof with a 
book or a paper and would battle against the after- 
appetite which, being an absorbed reader, I could 
sometimes forget. Now if I could hold out an hour 
I was all right, for satiety of a kind came to me with 
the digestion of the tea and bread, but I generally 
fell in about twenty to twenty-five minutes, when I 
would dash out nefariously into the powdery face and 
black humorous eyes of Mr. Belmo, the Swiss con- 
fectioner at the corner, who seemed to know all about 
it and to be highly amused, and spend a whole six- 
pence on a Madeira cake which I would smuggle up- 
stairs and eat in bed as I read "Robinson Crusoe’’ or 
the Home Rule leader in the "Daily News,” leaving 
my bed full of crumtbs and a restless night. 

Which meant walking to and from the City next 
day. 

But even in my most reckless moments and having 
a strained idea of the iniquity of debt, I never ate into 
the ten shillings that I paid the Cedars. 

Nor was my position improved at the end of my 
first six-monthly period. There was no bonus from 
the Prospectus Department. Hawkling had only just 
held his own — a little better than the previous six 
months, for though there had been a loss on the de- 
partment he had introduced some capital into the Cave 
from a little Italian warehouseman in Paddington 
whom he knew. He even turned up in a new blue 


104 PASSION 

serge suit and new spats. He always wore spats did 
Hawkling. 

On Saturdays the Cave shut at 3. Then I was 
free. Free for what? 

The ordinary days when I did not have the 3d. for 
lunch, I went into the Royal Exchange, regaling my- 
self at Pimm’s or Birch’s on my way, turning over 
the oysters, the crabs, or the boar’s head — ornamented. 
Then with my long lean stomach quivering, I would 
walk into the Exchange and sit on a seat watching the 
beadles gorgeous in livery. But on Saturdays this 
was something other. I could not go into the Royal 
Exchange on a Saturday and sit there till tea-dinner 
time; and on Saturdays in particular my efforts were 
frowned upon, for as my aunt said, “it was really very 
awkward some people could not even on Saturdays 
dine in the City like Christians — but this came of 
paupers and pauping,” a verb she had fallen upon in 
a rare flight of imagining. 

But there were those red-letter, dare-devil Satur- 
days, when with an empty stomach and resting in my 
waistcoat pocket a golden half-sovereign, potent as 
the little gold god of those early days, I could not 
resist plunging into a high narrow-faced German 
restaurant at the top of Cheapside where I sometimes 
poured out a whole one and threepence for a cut from 
the joint, two vegetables, and some sweet pudding. 
If I had a chop with celery, which I much preferred 
to the joint, it came to one and sevenpence. Some- 
times I even ran to a 3d. cup of coffee, but the results 
in the following week upon my boots and legs and 
stomach were so poignant that it only happened very 
occasionally. I know that after these meals I felt 
strong and elated — especially when I had taken coffee. 


£:S:D, 


105 


In that event I did not return to the Cedars for the 
tea-dinner, but afterwards luxuriated in the British 
Museum or St. Paul’s. I learnt every monument and 
inscription in the Cathedral by heart — and a stony 
heart-breaking place it was — whilst in the mummy 
room of the British Museum I became a kind of 
Egyptologist, dreaming near the ashes of Cleopatra and 
losing myself in the shadow of the excoriated man in 
his clay bed. And so I did not get back to the Cedars, 
where I was being regarded more and more distinctly 
as a dam nuisance, something of which to be ridden, 
to be shelved as soon as was decently or indecently 
possible — though the impression was growing in me, 
preposterously, that my weekly ten shillings was not 
to be sneezed at, despite the hemp trade and the queen- 
liness of my aunt. “The Cedars” had all the dis- 
advantages of the home with the atmosphere of the 
boarding-house. 


XII 


ALONE 

The truth was that at this time I was sick with lone- 
liness. My thoughts, inbrooding, were always turn- 
ing in upon themselves, pressing upon my mind as a 
sternum presses upon a lung, setting up mental tuber- 
culosis. Outside the Cave, nobody spoke to me, nobody 
noticed me. Frayed as I was, my sensitiveness, like 
my shyness, was becoming abnormal: each day saw 
me turn in upon myself, lose myself a little more from 
those about me. On some days it was misery for me 
to be spoken to. 

When I first came to London, I was full of ambi- 
tions to make money — the lust that was showing itself 
in those days of limited liability and unlimited pros- 
pects, in which a man's losses were limited to the 
face value of the shares for which he had subscribed, 
whilst it dangled golden prizes before him. My poor 
head was filled with all sorts of sayings inherited from 
my mother: “I had put my hand to the plough and I 
must not look back" — to look back, as in the case of 
Lot's wife, was the sin unforgivable — “Take care of 
the pence and the pounds will take care of themselves" 
— and the dogmatic, unanswerable: “Nothing Suc- 
ceeds like Success." The little gold god had got into 
my head — was singing there — singing the song of the 
Golden Door and the Golden Road. Despite my fears 
106 


ALONE 107 

of this thing, I had been taught to regard it, the world 
regarded it, as the Keeper of the Door. 

But this thing was deeper than my upbringing — I 
had the lust to success and I worshipped success. I de- 
tested, despised, failure. If the only way to success 
were through the temple of the Jittle god, then I was 
going into it, even if it were a cave littered with dry 
bones, as I began to think of Golgotha House. 

For despite all these shadows settling about me, I 
was entirely determined to “get on” in the City. At 
Golgotha House I did my work, such as it was, strenu- 
ously, and with a conscience that should have helped 
me in a place where Mandrill demanded a very nice 
sense of conscience from his employees — that is, 
towards himself and towards Big Business. 

I could be conscientious, for to me Big Business had 
always been respectable. The silk hat and striped 
unmentionables of Mandrill flaunting themselves, 
clothed the man inside them with entire correctitude — 
religion and riches had always been associated in my 
mind. Besides, I hated doing less than my best. My 
favourite text, before London had taken some of the 
lustre from my priggishness, had been Ecclesiastes IX, 
10: “Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it with 
thy might . . .” The rest of the verse: “for there 
is no work, nor device, nor knowledge, nor wisdom 
in the grave whither thou goest,” I ignored. I didn't 
believe in graves. 

I had no doubts of business, big or otherwise. To 
succeed in business was to succeed in Godheadedness. 
I had no doubts of Mandrill : why should I ? Sherling- 
ham at this time I fancy I had dismissed as a glaring 
exception to all things mundane: Shamble was the 
first quiet brute I had met, and youth forgets quickly. 


108 


PASSION 


It had certainly not made me suspicious of Mandrill. 
Yet even at the Cave something uneasy was creeping 
in. 

In those first fresh days I set me down to hold 
myself and my ideas intact in the face of Golgotha 
House as a child will set himself down before a mad 
dog. I suppose in the magnificent quixotry of those 
days I must have believed that I could hold the Cave 
to the turnings of my labyrinth conscience — that con- 
science which London had only intrigued. I would 
not have offended that conscience of my childhood 
full grown, in certain things, one jot or one tittle, for 
God himself. I am sure I had created a conscience 
unsubstantial in space outside my Maker. I was my 
own God. We always create our own gods. 

But there had been many things at Golgotha House, 
curious things, to make my conscience walk gingerly 
and stilted. Many of these things I scarcely under- 
stood — I felt them; but there were others — doubtful 
messages given to the pages to deliver — things that 
were called in the Cave “telling the tale” — things that 
battered my concept of religion and business — things 
that I had tried to explain away. The lies, the busi- 
ness lies, in particular stuck in my throat. I would 
not lie anyhow. 

The unconscious and Reverend Skinsole was the 
cause of my fall. 

The Reverend Thomas Skinsole — Thomas Didy- 
mus, as he was baptised by Old Pippin, who in his 
more inebriated moments had the habit of becoming 
biblical — was the bewildered but entirely determined 
pastor of a North London Baptist chapel, who, in the 
words of Hawkling, “was making himself a dam 
nuisance with his nosiness” about the Westington 


ALONE 


109 


Wonder Copper Mine, the shares of which had slumped 
heavily after having jumped to three times their face 
value. The Reverend Thomas, attracted by Mandrill’s 
position as a pillar of the Church, and dazzled with a 
promise of a seat on the board in the unspecified 
future, had been advising his flock, who followed him 
in temporal as in spiritual things, and with them had 
invested rather* heavily in Westington Wonders. 

Spurred by his losses, and by his congregation, the 
Reverend Skinsole was now demanding to see Mandrill 
himself, driving Hawkling to the edge of insanity. 
One day when the reverend gentleman had been filling 
the Cave with his complainings, and Hawkling with 
incipient ideas of self-destruction, Mandrill ’phoned 
down one of his departmental communications to 
Hawkling asking him for certain calculations at once. 
Hawkling lost his head and rang for the page, but 
that boy Smeeter, who had developed a habit of going 
downstairs, where he devoured penny dreadfuls and 
pink literature, was not there. So he asked me to 
take them up to the great man, and to say that Mr. 
Skinsole had been enquiring again about the Westing- 
ton Wonder and would like to see him; and he would 
complete the rest of the calculations within a few 
minutes. 

Mandrill was crouched over his desk — he always 
crouched there though he was straight enough when 
he stood up, despite that curious strength-curve in 
his shoulders. He put his hand out mechanically for 
the estimates without looking up as I gave him the 
message, whilst behind him Old Sabretooth grinned 
diabolically. 

"Oh ! Skinsole — tell him you have just seen me go 
out. . . ” 


110 


PASSION 


As I heard him I grew tense with battle. Now I 
knew what the feelings of the early Christians before 
the lions were. I was afraid . . . but this was a lie 
and I would not say it. 

I must have been a curiotis object, with my greenish 
eyes and great bony frame as I began in a very little 
voice indeed: 

“But . . . Sir. . . ” 

“Well — what is it, boy?” He still went on writing. 

“But, Sir, I haven’t seen you go out. . . 

“What’s that!” The hugeous nose swung round 
on me : the eyes focussed me gradually. 

“What’s that got to do with it ?” he asked. 

“It’s a lie and I cannot tell a lie.” I felt horribly 
sneakish and George Washingtonian. But I held on 
respectfully but surely: “I can’t say you’re out when 
you’re not.” 

The very least I expected was personal violence. 

Personal violence indeed. Mandrill always did the 
unexpected: it was the thing that eternally discon- 
certed his business rivals — it disconcerted me. . . . 

“Oh, I know. You’re young Tempest. You’re a 
nice sort of conscientious murderer. . . ” It came 
from him in a Jovian blast. 

“And quite right, my boy. I am a Christian myself. 
But for the sake of our common Christianity don’t 
martyr me . . . and yourself. Quite right, my boy — 
conscience and all that — but it’s not your lie, it’s mine, 
I take it on me. And it’s business you know . . . 
Business.” 

This in a voice that disposed of all things. He had 
stood up, gigantic, and to my understanding astonish- 
ment was haranguing me — not me — something inside 
himself. 


ALONE 


111 


"It’s a white lie. It’s not a lie at all. Be as con- 
scientious to me as you are to your God and you'll do. 
Now go.” 

Mandrill could not bear to have any opposition, not 
even from his office boy. He was an overpowering, 
convincing, talking animal. I understood him. I too 
was an argumentative, talking animal. 

But he had not convinced me. I went, indetermi- 
nate. “A white lie.” To me it looked as black as 
pitch. But, still, a white lie — a “white” lie — that of 
course was different. I gave the message. It was 
my first fall in the Jungle. I felt that something had 
touched the hem of my garment. . . . 


But as the months went on, two things were happen- 
ing to me: my consciousness, my awareness, of things 
about me was becoming tense and* intense, the things' 
and people about me limning themselves ever clearer 
upon a retina sensitised by loneliness and aloofness; 
and with this there was coming to me, vaguely, a 
questioning — a questioning as to the meaning of 
things, which showed itself in an increasing attention 
to the debates on Mr. Gladstone's Home Rule Bill and 
in an infrequent reading of popular science handbooks; 
and a certain tacit opposition to what I conceived to 
be the more outrageous of Hawkling's demands. 

In the beginning I saw in the City only the silk hat 
and the respectability of which it was the insignia; 
that respectability in which, as in the odour of sanc- 
tity, I had been steeped — I did not see the budding 
horns inside. I saw the striped trousers' leg and the 
patent boot — I did not see the hoof within. I saw 
Mandrill, sometimes, a figure of power and brute 
force, force immaculately clothed and ordered, and I 


112 


PASSION 


accepted these things as I accepted all other things — 
in the way that the child accepts. These things dazzled 
me and the excitement of them held back the loneliness 
that was now settling about me, but as it settled I be- 
came always more questioning, more critical. I sup- 
pose it was my nature. I was a criticising questioning 
animal. 

This loneliness settled down on me like a shadow 
that creeps over the face of the sun. Marooned mar- 
iners in lonely seas never know the ultimate loneliness 
— for you cannot be alone by yourself. I was being 
alone in crowds — in the loneliest place in the world. 

I walked those streets in those early months as cut 
off from my fellows as though I had come from an- 
other planet. They had nothing to do with me or I 
with them. Out of all those millions, there was not 
one who ever came up to me, lonely wretch that I was, 
to take me by the hand — even to look kindly upon me. 
Their ways were not my ways: their very dress as 
their conversation and their way of thinking was 
foreign to me: and they knew, instinctively, that I was 
not of their breed. 

I would watch them like an animal from its cage 
as they passed me on the city streets. Here was a 
gaunt man with the eye of a boiled codfish who sleeked 
it solemnly in a morning coat. Who was he ? Where 
did he come from? What was his business? Behind 
him a little clerk, sallow and pinched, his glazed # collar 
pushing his scalded head from his wry neck. Who 
was he? Where did he come from? Here was a 
young fresh girl, chatting with a highly polished stock 
broker. Who was she? What brought her into the 
City? 

In the Cave itself I saw men “as in a glass darkly 


ALONE 


113 


and yet face to face.” Who was Hawkling really — 
the Hawkling that lived up Paddington way? What 
were his private ways? He had a wife: did he kiss 
her? Did he really have children? what were they 
like ? I could see them as blousy specimens like their 
father. 

Where had Smeeter his hole? What was Mandrill 
like in his Park Lane House? Was it really true that 
this terrible man had a religious wife, and children. 
Mandrill and children ... it seemed the wildest sort 
of nonsense. Who were those others in the Cave 
whose names I didn’t even know? Where did Mr. 
Crosbill live — did he live anywhere or only in his cage? 
I could not think of Crosbill without his little gold 
cage. Had old Pippin a home — and was The Jackal 
really human or had he not always kenneled up there 
in his lookout ? 

And when the City emptied on a Saturday after- 
noon, and I was left behind by the ebbing of the 
human tide, looking at the closed doors, treading the 
empty echoing streets, I asked myself what the place 
really was? Was it a place of the dead — a city of 
tombs and deserted churches in which the bells never 
rang? 

This thing did not shroud me at once — it crept. I 
have wandered along the grey wastes of Cheapside 
and Holborn like a wanderer in a city of dreams; 
seeing a scraggy cat cross the road like a spectre; 
looking up at the windows that stared deadly at me; 
listening to the trot of a hansom that ghosted through 
the loneliness. And I was the man who wandered 
into the lost city behind the dunes and never returned. 

Once — once — in a fit of adventurous daring to get 
out of this city of the dead I took a cheap Saturday 


114 


PASSION 


afternoon ticket to Brighton for 3/6 — 3/6 I had saved 
out of the price of the new coat and jacket — and 
came back frightened from that chaos of orange peel, 
ices, and babies; from “London by the Sea;” came 
back with visions of London finally spreading over the 
whole world. 

The only thing that kept me from going mad was 
that, even here, I could not be indifferent. 

It was this atmosphere that bred again the sex- 
shadows that Sherlingham had sterilised. These 
things flitted back into those darkened chambers — stole 
back one by one like occupants who have been exor- 
cised. They did not come tangibly — but they came. 

Sherlingham had made the thought of this thing 
impossible, but it had only held the thing under as one 
holds a wild beast — or was it something other? — that 
struggles to free itself under the hand. 

It had begun to separate itself from under my hand 
that day in the wood with little Sheilah ; begun for the 
first time to segregate itself, intangibly, into the idea 
of sex. Now, flung into the streets of the great city, 
alone, inbrooding, hypersensitised, it began to draw 
itself together — to define itself into something other — 
into shape and form — into the two words I had heard 
so often and puzzled over — “the sex,” as though 
woman alone were the incarnation of sex. 

Here as I passed in passion of loneliness along the 
grey pavements of London, the thing smiled to me as 
it had never smiled to me in Ireland — or perhaps it 
was I that had changed. I saw it through the faces 
that flitted past me on the pavements; new faces each 
day; faces that laughed indifferently in the sunlight 
of the mornings or at one another; faces that lost 
themselves in the dust and light of the city day, but 


ALONE 


115 


that waited for me in the evenings. The thing showed 
itself in the white teeth that shone out at me under the 
arc lights as I walked down Moorgate Street ; tangled 
itself in the hair of the swarth Jewesses from the East 
End who flooded the city ways in the evenings; that 
glimmered through the dusky tawn of others, like the 
Girl in the Window — for on the pavements there was 
always the girl with the hair of the red dusk, her eyes 
gleaming like stars in the white lights, who beckoned 
to me and danced and glanced. 

In the early days I feared to look at them, not 
through fear but through the awe with which the 
woman filled me. I blushed redly if they caught my 
glance, and I hated them sometimes that they did not 
resent it — resent it as the superior beings that I con- 
ceived them; for I conceived them, I think I had al- 
ways conceived them, as a race apart from men — and 
even whilst I wondered, it irritated. 

But above all else, the thing as it came to me through 
these faces and laughs and white teeth, and peered 
at me from between the softened outlines of the 
woman-body, filled me with a sense of distance — dis- 
tance unbridgeable — with unattainableness, and this in 
its turn, at ever decreasing intervals gave way to 
irritation, a feverish irritation to annihilate this barrier 
between us and to get closer to them, to enter into 
their ways of thinking — to understand them. They 
filled me with worship and awe, but also with some- 
thing else — something darker — something murderous. 

Sheilah began to recede from me as these others 
came closer. I was no longer the lover of a woman, 
but of Woman. As they became more concrete and 
more unattainable, as my shyness and misery increased, 
this beast under my hand began to get free, to cry 


116 


PASSION 


i 


inarticulate. When I saw a tall, fair girl, I felt that the 
whole world turned on slenderness and fairness and 
brown curved eyebrows ; I could not conceive of there 
being any other type in the world ... a dark-haired 
Jewess, and I was en-frenzied for the mystery of her 
eyes and hair ... a red-haired girl, and her hair 
brought back to me my first love of the Girl in the 
Window and I lost myself again in the tangle of her 
tresses — the tresses of fire and love and stars. The 
gleam of an eye slanting from the crowd, and I con- 
jured up the girl entire — I fell in love with a sound; 
with the turn of a head; with a scented shadow. 

And over all, the despairing shyness — even my girl 
cousins whom I hated filled me with shyness. It was 
a time of dark flushes — of white lights — of jewelled 
breasts — of scented words — of fire flash and sulphur- 
ous smoke. It was a time of exaltation — of purity — 
of yearning — it was a time when one son of men at 
least saw the daughters of the gods that they were 
fair. 

And these thoughts that twined themselves about 
me, these thoughts culled from the grey asphalt of 
the London streets, from the trams and buses, went 
home with me. These girls stayed me in my thoughts. 
They stayed with me concrete, tangible — they worked 
on me and in me. They tormented me to unimagi- 
nable realisation — and finally, alone in my room in the 
grey dawn between sleeping and waking, sent my 
thoughts pulsating down the dark corridors of forget- 
fulness where I left my strength. They careered 
through my dreams; they turned in a sort of Carmag- 
nole inside me — they haunted me and were more real 
as shadows than as the living creatures I had seen with 
the eye of flesh. / 


XIII 


FEAR STREET 

In my loneliness I had written to my mother and 
father to ask them to let me come home for a week 
at Christmas, with the half-fledged idea, for I was 
now very sick, of not coming back. My mother had 
written about “putting my hand to the plough,” and 
had thrown the Sherlingham murder, as she called it, 
into my teeth. Then she had stopped replying. I had 
written several times without an answer when my 
uncle Jerry appeared before me a little more funereal 
than usual with a telegram in his hand. It was the 
message that cut off my last line of retreat. My 
father was dead. 

I am not going to pretend I was shocked. I felt I 
ought to be, but my first thought was that it cut me 
off in London, unless my mother wanted me home. 
My mother however was seriously ill. 

Some days afterwards, Hawkling handed me, as he 
occasionally did, some letters from shareholders in 
order to look up their holdings in what he called “The 
Book of the Dead.” When a company looked like 
giving up the ghost, and it was a moral certainty the 
shareholders would get nothing back, we called the 
shareholders “dead-uns” and the share register in 
which stood their names and holdings — “The Book of 
the Dead.” 

I was going through the lists when I saw newly in- 
117 


118 


PASSION 


scribed at the end of the ledger: “Tempest, James” 
■with the surname first. “Tempest.” I looked at the 
name stupidly. It never occurred to me that the name 
was my own. “Tempest, James, Gentleman, 500 
shares.” 

It was my father. He was respectable even in 
death. Everything came to the Cave, and as I later 
found out from my uncle when he went through his 
affairs, it was the little investor's last despairing plunge 
to retrieve his fortunes. He had lost. He had played 
the game with the Cave. A stroke of paralysis had 
come to him, and finished him. Mandrill always did 
things cleanly . . . Mandrill or the little gold god 
which had turned into the Octopus. 

My mother followed him. I had always thought 
her a hard-hearted woman, powerfully fond of money 
as I knew. But her heart was harder than her brain, 
and she too had been worrying her brain thin and had 
gone down under the double shock of money and 
husband — for she was fond of him in her own hard 
way. Perhaps he was the only thing she had cared 
for. 

So I was alone. Alone in London. 

Save for some distant relatives in the North of 
England whom I had never seen, and my uncle Jere- 
miah, I had nobody in the world; and he and my 
aunt were worse than nobody. There was, he told 
me, a trifle of money left which might give me five 
shillings a week for a year or two until I could earn 
enough myself. He would look after the little prin- 
cipal until it was exhausted. The furniture and so 
on would go to pay my father's debts and his and 
my mother's funerals. I heard to my great grief that 
they had sold even my books and my little toys. 


FEAR STREET 


119 


I cried when I heard of my mother's death, not 
when I heard of that of my father, and then forgot 
her for ever and remembered him. For so I was. 

I was marooned. I was the man on the island who 
watched the ship sail away. Away at the back of my 
mind I must have nursed the thought that if my lone- 
liness became unbearable, that is, if it proved stronger 
than ambition, I could go back to Ireland and dream 
out my life in the sheltered mediocrity of my native 
town, where, though there was not much money, there 
was much love. 

The dead wall about me seemed to close in on me. 
I could feel myself for ever treading the ramifications 
of the Cave ; for ever peering at the , faces on the 
pavements; beating the grey circus of the London 
streets. I could see myself friendless in perpetuity, 
struggling with my wretched pence, burdened with 
the pettifoggery of living and of life. And then when 
I felt that this was the thing unredeemable, there came 
to me that November afternoon in the Royal Ex- 
change, where I had gone to nurse my sorrows, two 
things apparently irrelevant to each other and to the 
mood that was on me. 

There are thoughts in one's life — things seemingly 
incoherent, meaningless, which stand out in the long 
afterwards, unmistakable. It is so with the thoughts 
of that evening. Into my misery and because of that 
perversity of thought which comes to all the people 
of imagination, the sex-thing obtruded itself. I had 
never seemed so ridiculous — so far away — so repellent. 
I could not believe that it had ever held me. But 
something stirred within me — there came the gnaw- 
ing like the pulse of an old angry wound, and then 
without transition, the prickling had flashed to sheer 


120 


PASSION 


exultant ambition, to a despairing ambition to succeed, 
to make my bed in this London where I had to make 
it and to turn it into a golden couch. # To win money 
in the Cave — but above all to win fame, power. 

It was as though a great passion had possessed me, 
transforming into a sunburst the grey lights of the 
day that died through the high windows of the Ex- 
change. The very cocked hats and broidered cloaks 
of my enemies the beadles became colour-symbols of 
the future. Under the impetus of the thing that 
stirred me, I rose from the stone seat and passed out 
through the swing doors into Threadneedle Street 
and saw before me the grey portals of the Bank of 
England. I took it as symbolic also. That was the 
temple of the little gold god. There, were the portals 
to be stormed. Behind them the god was waiting to 
yield me the secret of the temple. My eye swept the 
bare space before the Mansion House with the air of 
a conqueror. I had only to will to have. 

In that moment I unlocked the secret of the gods — 
“To will — to have.” To win through all these em- 
battled millions — to succeed — to make good. But 
behind it was something other — something not of 
money-making; something eternal, aspiring. 

It mattered nothing that before an hour had passed 
I was back in the greyness again. I had glimpsed the 
spires and battlements of the Eternal City and noth- 
ing could take the vision from me. 

My very isolation became something magnificent. 
Gave me courage and hope. The satisfaction of 
knowing I had touched bottom — every step thereafter 
would have to be upward. 

I searched about me for the first step upon the 
golden way, the first decisive action, and my thoughts 


FEAR STREET 121 

went to “The Cedars.” The first thing was to break 
from them. 

The patronizing indifference of these people, their 
respectability, left me in moods that alternated be- 
tween slow white anger and the desire to do some- 
thing to shock them into humanness. I pictured my- 
self taking the white cloth in my hands and dragging 
the whole breakfast service off the table; shouting at 
them; having one satisfactory ten minutes with my 
solemn humbug of an uncle and my little Cockney- 
faced aunt. But I was shy, and, in a way, fearing. 
It was one of the tragedies of my life that I could 
never quite throw off the yoke of the grown-ups 
whom I despised. I felt these things — I could not 
carry them out; and these two people never guessed 
the quick-bed they were nursing in the bosom of the 
Prince Consort Road. 

Even now in this new inspiration I feared that I 
would not have the strength to go through with it. 
I was conservative and I hated change. If I could 
have done it in a burst of indignation, one of those 
bursts which made me sheer through all things by 
conviction, giving me the ebullient strength of the 
fanatic, it would have been easy. If I could only 
have met my uncle and aunt as I came out of the 
Exchange they would have been easy prey; but this 
was a Saturday, and the trifle that I had to meet them 
at three meals on the Sunday held me up. 

There was something too cold-blooded about it. I 
could not do things in cold blood. 

Yet I held to the idea during the next week. The 
first flush was still unspent; and so on the Saturday 
afternoon I was to make my search for lodgings. 

I was a stranger in the big city. I had north, south, 


122 


PASSION 


east, and west and seven millions of people to search. 
The task of finding a place to lay my head seemed too 
formidable. But then the thought of the golden ways 
came back at me ; I was to be independent ; and I had 
to get away from respectability and Finsbury Park. 

Someone in the office had talked about a night in 
Soho. The name, foreign and un-English, had stuck 
in my ears. There was a flavour of adventure about 
it that ran with my new spirit. So far my walks in 
London had been strictly confined to the City, Hol- 
born, and on Sundays to Church Parade in Finsbury 
Park from which I stood aloof, criticising, admiring, 
and miserable. Hart Street, Bloomsbury, for the 
British Museum, marked my extremest course west- 
ward. To pass that corner and continue to the Oxford 
Music Hall, staring and highly-coloured, was a step, 
but a dangerous step. 

As that Saturday afternoon in November I turned 
off into the Tottenham Court Road, I felt I had burned 
my boats. 

There was something inimical about the Oxford 
Music Hall. It marked a stage in my progress, and, 
as I caught a glimpse of a protuberant be-hipped lady 
in pink tights carrying a minute parasol over her 
plumed, chubby head, there came to me under the 
high lights that Facilis est descensus Averni which had 
been Doctor Shamble’s favourite quotation. Here 
for the first time I was touching the fringe of wicked- 
ness. 

The Tottenham Court Road marked yet another 
step. Despite the honest smell of the tan, of the furni- 
ture shops, that brought back to me the travelling cir- 
cuses at home, there were fried fish shops and sausage- 
and-mashed-potato shops with steaming beds of brown 


FEAR STREET 


123 


onions which gave me to understand that I had fallen 
upon another stratum in this city of strata. Beyond the 
second of these shops there stood a sort of ante-cham- 
ber to hell, called “Joyland,” whose glittering fa£ade 
vied with the electric suns which by now had burst 
out. At the door stood an hypertrophied attendant 
in a compromise between a hussar’s cap and a Cossack 
coat that went down to his heels. 

This meretricious individual fixed me with his wand 
of office like a magician and waved airily into the land 
of pleasure behind, where bells of automatic machines 
tinkled; lucky wheels ran their courses; and an auto- 
matic orchestra brayed unceasing: “Ta-ra-ra-boom-de- 
ay,” upon which London was then getting drunk. 

“Joyland” frightened me. It nearly made me turn 
back, but I hurried past unheeding of the giant’s final 
adjuration “to be a sport and chance my arm,” and 
walked past a wooden Highlander at the entrance to 
a tobacco shop who, by his attitude to life, positively 
stunned me. 

Past a public-house which was half hotel, with 
“Wines: English and Foreign” that half restored my 
confidence; past a kind of tabernacle which with its 
multi-coloured appeal to “Earnest Young Christians” 
sent the place up again in my estimation and made me 
search the pavements for the Earnest Young Chris- 
tians mentioned; and then past a waxworks outside 
which stood life-like pictures of intensive surgical 
operations with much blood and insides, which de- 
pressed me again: past two more Joylands and a Jew 
gentleman with his nose, like his diamond pin, very 
much on one side, who jocosely adjured me 'that “if 
I didn’t see vat I vanted in the vindow vood I come 
insoide?” 


124 


PASSION 


He it was that decided my fate, for to get out of 
the reach of eye and tongue and nose I plunged abrupt- 
ly to the left into a street that exhaled old furniture, 
flatirons, babies, and spirituous liquors, the last coming 
from a public-house, of a different type to the one in 
the Tottenham Court Road. He was a big blatant 
fellow, garish, that tinkled and twinkled at me, his 
doors miraculously adjusted to the regulation and in- 
viting two inches, “The Genuine Old Tom” taking the 
place of the ‘‘Wines: English and Foreign.” 

The shadows were coming down as I turned off 
into a narrower and a trifle dirtier street. 

Here nobody took any notice of me. The people, 
like the street, seemed to take on a darker hue ; to show 
a certain greasiness of face. Some of them I should 
have believed to be Jews had they not had a more 
angular face and head, whilst there was less white in 
the eyes. However the sight of two corduroyed la- 
bourers, from their language, painfully British, and 
cries that could only be native of the soil, dispelled the 
impression. Over the shops there stood many Smiths 
and Browns, interspersed with a few Cohens. 

The night had fallen, as, getting bolder, I turned 
off into a slightly smaller street, with everywhere 
foreign names jostling and pushing at the English. 
Here, over a baker-confectioner’s stood the name Rein- 
hardt — on the other side was a sort of general store 
with the name Smith over it and an Italian-looking 
man standing outside in his shirt-sleeves critically 
examining a newly dressed window, who might have 
been Mr. Smith but who looked much more like 
my friend the Swiss confectioner, Mr. Belomo. A 
butcher’s shop, fringed with gas-jets which turned the 
raw reds and yellows of the sides of beef into raw 


FEAR STREET 


125 


blood and tallow, left no doubt as to its proprietor’s 
nationality, however, for over the door stood “John 
B. Bluddon,” whilst Mr. Bluddon himself, a bull of 
a man, walked up and down with his knife slapping 
a great block of wood and sometimes the sides of meat 
through his open front, as he shouted into the circum- 
ambient: “Buy! buy! buy! Value for money! Value 
for money!” what time his assistant, a diminutive 
butcher, four feet high and thirteen years old, did the 
same — his piercing treble at least could only come 
from a Cockney throat. But the dark, shawled women 
and the loose slouchy men who walked past took no 
notice of them. It was perhaps too early. 

Here was the battle of the Cave again, only with 
something warmer, more human, in it. 

But as I passed along, the Burtons and the Smiths 
were giving way to Bianchis, and Schmidts, and 
French names ending in “ois” and “in,” with one name 
that stuck in my memory — Pontopidan. I wondered 
what part of the world it came from. Here was a 
German sausage-shop with gigantic curved sausages 
like blind pigs; behind the counter a rotund, shaven- 
headed gentleman strapped and buttoned into a snowy 
linen jacket with brass buttons, giving me an inde- 
finable impression of militarism. 

On the other side of the street an Italian oilman’s 
was presided over by a German — The Original Eng- 
lish Id. House by an unmistakable Jew — whilst a 
little beetle-eyed Frenchman occupied the counter of 
a delikatessen shop with the name Bernstein in brazen 
letters on a white ground. 

Over the yellow silk screen of a barber’s shop, there 
came the picture of a lean, sardonic-looking person in 
waxed spiralled moustachios and goatee beard, who 


126 


PASSION 


appeared to be quietly cutting the double throat of a 
little plump fair man whose upturned nose he held 
between finger and thumb ; whilst the highly coloured 
advertisements of beauty specifics, the man’s eyes, a 
music-hall bill, and the scent of the lather and poma- 
tums, gave the place the nameless deviltry of the bar- 
ber’s shop. The man himself might have been a 
Frenchman, a Spaniard, or an Italian — the customers 
waiting, speaking the babel that came to my ears as 
the door opened might have been anything and come 
from anywhere — the man in the chair a German or 
an Englishman. But over the door, for by now I 
looked at all the names, there” stood “Rubanovitch.” 

Soho seemed to be a kind of International Tom 
Tiddler’s ground where everybody had exchanged 
places with everybody else, where the very names had 
changed nationality, where all nationalities and no 
nationality existed. Butcher, baker, and candlestick- 
maker, Jew, Turk, and Infidel — French patois stab- 
bing itself through Teuton gutturals — Yiddish and 
Cockney twining about and through it all ; with, com- 
ing back like a refrain, a musical tongue which was 
neither French, English, nor German, but a mixture 
of all — the Russian as I afterwards knew it to be. 

Dark, sallow-faced girls with bundles swung them- 
selves gracefully from the doors of little Russian-Pole 
tailors. Others — broken and bowed, straggled along 
the pavement edges carrying the same drab bundles 
over the arm. Blanketing my nostrils like an anaes- 
thetic there came a thick scent that reminded me in 
some way of white moths. It came from a tall, fine- 
looking girl who passed up towards the Tottenham 
Court Road with a curious flaunting movement of the 
jhips. Women in black shawls and red flannel petti- 


FEAR STREET 


127 


coats exchanged views across the street with other 
women who when they spoke English added “a’s” to 
the end of their words. 

The doughy scent of the browns and whites in the 
bread shops alternated with the smashes of reds and 
greens and the acrid smell of the decaying vegetables 
of the fruit shops. And everywhere, the children, now 
increased tenfold, outflowed from the doorways, over 
the pavements, into the gutterways — crept under the 
hoofs of the horses and ran from street wall to street 
wall — a shrieking, laughing, quarrelling, dirty lot. 

But hanging over it all was that earthy scent, blend- 
ed sometimes in sickly sweetness with the scent of 
white moths. 

Yet, after the City, after Finsbury Park, the atmos- 
phere was warm, almost friendly. Here nobody took 
any notice of you. Here one could lose oneself in 
merciful unconsciousness. There was no respectability 
here — and nobody stared at you — they themselves 
were all so unlike. Thank God ! nobody stared. And 
yet, nobody seemed indifferent. 

As I passed from street to street, reading the never- 
ending “chi” and “idt” name-terminations and the now 
rarer Browns and Joneses, I looked into the windows 
for a “To let” bill. More than once I had been tempted 
to go into a German or Italian confectioner’s where 
there hung the word “Apartments” or, more often, 
“Room to Let,” the changes being rung on the- “fur- 
nished” and “unfurnished,” whilst there were varia- 
tions, such as “Room for Single Gent” and once, un- 
derneath, “Single ladies not taken.” But I feared — 
feared the smell of the dough I think and the fleas. 
Smeeter had said that he knew as a fact that all bakers 
slept at night on their warm dough, and I had always 


128 PASSION 

been taught to associate fleas with foreigners — so far 
I was English. 

It was long after my hour of returning to “The 
Cedars” and I was beginning to get desperate down 
there in the noise and struggle and gutturals and 
lights, when I came upon the long, crowded street. 

“Fire Street” stood on the corner, but the Latin in- 
habitants had corrupted it to “Fear Street,” and as 
such it was known and even spelt when the inhabitants 
spelt it at all. 

It was a street much as the others, but broader, with 
a suggestion of faded finery hanging to it. Standing 
over from the corner where I looked, a house faced 
me, a mansion of a place, peeling and battered. I 
stared at it, for I knew it — had seen it before — or had 
dreamt it. I knew the fagade, recognised even the four 
balconies of ancient, twisted iron that hung outside 
the windows — something that became a certainty as 
the fine fanlight over the open hall-door caught my eye 
and I watched the children playing on the flight of 
stone steps. My eyes turned instinctively for the links 
where the linkmen used to extinguish their torches. 
They were there and did not surprise me. It was like 
meeting an old friend. 

When I crossed the street, I searched the gloom 
illumined by a single petering gas-jet, and recognised 
the broad carved balustrade, hacked, broken, filthy, 
but still noble in its degradation. • 

This thing was not to be explained. There are cer- 
tain houses and places, like certain faces, that one feels 
assured one has met before, and the house in Fear 
Street was one of these. 

“Apartments” stood in dirty letters on a green 
ground in the broken fanlight. 


FEAR STREET 


129 


My eye searched the row of greasy bells that ran 
to the different floors, uncertain as to the bell to ring. 
Who was it that had apartments to let? 

As I searched them and looked into the blind eye 
of the hall, I was conscious of the woman. She stood 
there peering out at me, but with her face turned side- 
ways, and despite her height, with a curious cock 
upwards. She was a skinny woman with bleached 
hair and bleached clothes, standing whitely against the 
surrounding gloom, whilst the children, unheeding, 
fell up and down the broken steps and played around 
my legs. 

The eye that was turned on me was full of mother’s 
milk — I can only put it in that way. It glimmered 
whitely in the half-lights, and then as the head turned 
on itself there came, apparently out of the nothingness, 
a brown eye, with nothing ghostly in it — a brown eye 
contracted, with kindly lights coming and going in it. 
But human though it was, it was the sightless eye that 
gave confidence, the confidence one has in blinded 
people. For I saw that the milky eye was sightless. 

“Yes, she had a nice little room — I could see it in 
half a jiff.” 

I asked her diffidently whether she was the lady of 
the house, to which she answered with a queer little 
twisted but all kindly smile that she had the letting of 
the place, and her name was Skrimgeour . . . “but 
you know they all call me Mrs. S.” And she smiled 
again with the sightless eye. 

She led me over the half-hidden playing children 
into the shadow of the great stairs, up the broad steps 
with the broken balustrades with every now and then 
a kindly: “Mind your step now, there’s a hole there” 
— up the steps where every step was a murder, whilst 


130 


PASSION 


from the big square landings there ran short flights 
leading to unknown passages which showed themselves 
in the branching lights that crannied from under the 
doors. Up and up past the keyholes with the lights 
behind them, past crying children — and once I thought 
I heard an oath and something heavy flung against a 
door; whilst below somebody was jingling “Whisper 
and I shall hear” on a tin piano. 

All this Mrs. S. took with equanimity, “for,” as she 
said when she showed me the little fourth floor back, 
“we all have to live.” 

With her as with all women I felt unbearably shy. 
I thought her distinctly beautiful, despite her blinded 
eye, and then blushed hotly with self-reproach that I 
should think of that. I felt it an insult to her to ask 
her the rent and to say that I couldn’t afford the eight 
shillings, for I had worked out my limit for lodging. 
Though I would save 2d. a day on fares by living in 
Soho, I knew it would be a pretty tight fit. 

In the fight for existence which I found in its way 
as intensive here in Soho as in Golgotha House, I ex- 
pected at the least to be sent about my business, but 
it was Mrs. S. who called me “lovey-duck” to my 
extreme confusion, and with her “We all have to live,” 
said I could have the room for six. 

There was a little gas stove I was to have a share 
of for another threepence a week and “I could either 
do for myself or be done for.” With the vaguest 
notions as to what “being done for” really meant, and 
proud of my new-found liberty, I said I would do for 
myself. 

And so it was arranged, and very proprietorial I 
found myself. But I was looking out of the little win- 
dow with sorrow gripping at my heart for the dead 


FEAR STREET 


131 


things, now far away, looking down the line of grey 
wall into the crowded yards, at the cats, at the maze 
of windows across the way with the yellow lights in 
them — and heard the cries of the children and caught 
the scents from the streets — that acid earthy scent . . . 
Soho . . . whilst somewhere below in the house a 
girl was beginning to scream . . . Soho. 

Mrs. S. looked at me as she stepped back and closed 
the door. “We all have to live and no questions 
asked,” she said. 

It was her philosophy. The philosophy of Fear 
Street as I came to know it. “We all have to live 
. “We all have to live. , . 


XIV 


MISS ELLA 

This thing had to be done at once, but it cost me a 
night’s sleep. It was all very well to say to myself 
that my uncle couldn’t eat me; that I was my own 
master; that the room was waiting for me. Despite 
all my revolution I still had the revolutionary’s inbred 
respect for authority. But I held to my resolution. 

Then the tempter came. After all I need not go to 
Fear Street yet . . . not at all if I liked, for Mrs. S. 
didn’t even know my name. And the sight of extra 
bacon and an unexpected egg at breakfast still further 
weakened me . . . and the tea was good. After all 
“The Cedars” were not so impossible, and I could not 
eat and drink comfortably — I am afraid I liked my 
food — with the thought that I was going to fling a 
bombshell into the bosom of an innocent family. I 
even began to find maternal lights in the sausage rolls 
and pale eyes of my aunt . . . and my uncle’s grey 
Irish eyes seemed to regard me reproachfully . . . 
really it was not easy. 

But the tea and the bacon did their work in me — I 
was always elated after good food ; and a chance ref- 
erence of my uncle to “the dirty Irish,” following upon 
his perusal in his Sunday paper of the Home Rule 
debate, made me contemptuous of myself and of him. 
Resolution rose in my gorge to stifle. Nothing could 
stop me now, not even my aunt’s gracious intimation 
132 


MISS ELLA 133 

that I could take the last piece of bacon — if I felt I 
really wanted it. 

The truth was that I was full of angry, and some of 
them unjust, resentments at this time — morose — 
melancholic. I was a rogue elephant in the jungle of 
London, solitary, ready to hurt — even malignant. Yet 
with it I was wretched and soft; for though I was 
entirely intolerant and forgiving, I had underneath a, 
desire to love and to be loved — to understand and to 
be understood. 

The sight across the breakfast-table of my aunt 
Maud's smug, squat face; her fair lashes and weak 
blue eyes; her general cock-eyed satisfaction; my 
uncle's melancholy humbug; his unconscious black- 
guardly orthodoxy; his lack of temperature and tem- 
perament ; all those things which at first had impressed 
me now fell to pieces before my eyes, and as I looked 
across the white expanse of cloth, put me into a kind 
of cold frenzy. 

My uncle and certainly my aunt who, so to speak, 
was all abroad, did not fall to the facts at once. When 
a silent and properly humiliated murderer, who has 
been living under your roof upon sufferance for the 
best part of a year, stands up and with angry green 
eyes says he is “clearing out to-day . . “clearing 
out" — that was the vulgarism — it is time to make 
things clear. 

So my uncle, to make things clear, but still a little 
dazed, fixed his eye somewhere in space upon the 
Deity, and spoke about ingratitude and attempted 
murder and the responsibility of a natural protector. 
And again there came to me as I listened that incredi- 
ble feeling that my ten shillings a week was not alto- 
gether a negligible quantity in the finances of “The 


134 


PASSION 


Cedars I caught it in something like a quaver in 
my uncle's voice. There were concluding references 
to the profligate and runagate ; and a sudden reversion 
to the main chance and the destruction of my career 
at Golgotha House, which rather spoiled the other. 
And then, as an afterthought, there was a veiled refer- 
ence to a policeman which really frightened me. 

I know I meant to do it much better. There had 
been a vision of my implacable self standing at the 
table and orating succinctly into five precious minutes 
my opinion of “The Cedars," its starvation, and its 
respectability. I had even had dim ideas of projecting 
my attack into the heart of Society itself — this follow- 
ing upon my dawning convictions and my recent in- 
vestigations, sociological and scientific, but feeling my- 
self upon unfamiliar and unsafe ground I abandoned 
the notion. 

Now when my uncle had finished, I felt something 
of the runagate and could only sulkily say like a parrot 
repeating a lesson: “I am clearing out to-day — I am 
clearing out to-day.” 

I said it many times, until feeling the situation im- 
possible, I plunged out of the room; fortifying myself 
as I passed with the look upon my aunt’s fat face. 

My trunk I packed feverishly, badly, and, as I dis- 
covered later, I forgot my toothbrush. Fortunately 
it was the beginning of the week so that I had the 
necessary fare, and by ten o’clock that night I was 
installed. 

My trunk bumped itself up the broad broken stairs, 
on the back of the rickety hanger-on I had pulled 
from his place at “The Old House at Home,” for the 
cabman, a scorbutic individual in a dust coat and nose- 
gay had dumped my trunk on the pavement, taken a 


MISS ELLA 


135 


two shilling piece above his fare, pretty well cleaning 
me out, and having indignantly and even blasphemous- 
ly repudiated any further responsibility for me or my 
box, had driven away like lightning. Now the door 
had closed on the man from “The Old House at 
Home,” his steps, uneven, jumbling down the stairs, 
and there was I in my Fear Street fourth floor back, 
standing over my box, alone. 

No, not alone. The November moon, misty, peered 
in at me through the unclean window. The four walls, 
the paper stripping, showed me W. E. Gladstone in 
coal, hanging, a pipe in his mouth, his tongue lolling. 
My iron stretcher-bed stood folded in its corner, the 
straw mattress rolled against it, and a bare litter of 
deal table, chair, and crazy dresser that made the 
room “furnished.” From somewhere below the piano 
was playing “Two Lovely Black Eyes,” mingled I 
thought with the sound of a woman’s voice singing a 
hymn, whilst the cries of the ever-playing children 
came up to me. 

I should have felt broken. I felt a man. I should 
have been lonely and wretched. I felt for a moment 
at one with life and all humanity. But my spirits, 
high, exulting, dominating, free, changed quickly. 

I had forgotten the question of bedclothes. They 
were not in the bond. “Mrs. S.” had said so ex- 
pressly. “Folks generally provided their own bed 
things.” I had had ideas of a rug. . . . 

This trifle was intolerable, and dragged at its heels 
the humiliation of the cabman and the moral weak- 
ness of yielding him two shillings to which he was 
not entitled. I had counted on installing myself com- 
plete. I had even remembered the tallow candle and 
matches — but the bedclothes. Dreams of piling my 


136 


PASSION 


poor wardrobe on the bed flitted through my mind, 
I even tried it. It was no use. 

Nothing for it but to look for Mrs. S. She must 
lend me something. Already I felt her a mother. 
Then I felt lonely. 

I got down those stairs to the lower regions by the 
blessing of heaven and the lights through the door 
chinks. In the depths, with their indescribable smell, 
all was dark and cold. Fearfully I knocked at door 
after door. Nobody answered. It was dead cold — 
dog cold. 

Somebody was coming down the stairs above me. 
“Mrs. S. ! Mrs. S. !” a girl's voice rose falsetto — 
“Mrs. S. ! Mrs. S. !” I stood there frightened, I don’t 
know why. The steps were coming to me. Something 
touched me — there was a scream. 

“It’s only me,” I said, apologetic. “Mrs. S. isn’t 
at home — I have been trying to get her also.” 

I blurted it out in my misery: “Bedclothes — bed- 
clothes,” that was what I wanted. Very shyly, but as 
these things sometimes did when I was desperate, it 
came from me. 

“You come along o’ me.” The girl took me up the 
stairs to the fourth front. “She won’t be ’ome till 
3 or 4. She goes out to a friend’s.” 

She opened her door. The room, facing the street, 
was a large, barish apartment, with a hard horse-hair 
sofa, a magnificent, discoloured, marble mantelpiece 
from the old days; a cracked gilt glass; and a fright- 
full mass of bric-a-brac which filled the room but felt 
it barer than ever, in spite of the photos on the mantel- 
piece and scattered about the room. 

The room was lit by a gas chandelier; heavy, glob- 
uled. It showed the walls almost pictureless and the 


MISS ELLA 


137 


pictures that were there excessively romantic: “Love’s 
Young Dream:” “The Soul’s Awakening,” with a 
girl enraptured clasping a book to her breast. “Day- 
dreams:” and a big framed “Bubbles” advertisement 
of Pears’ Soap. There was an old copy of “The 
Family Herald” and “Weldon’s Journal,” but no 
books. 

It was only then I looked at the girl. I had felt 
too shy. She was bending down over the fire, stirring 
the coals, and taking off a little black kettle with an 
apology. As she turned, not ungracefully, I saw her. 
The light caught her dress of black satin, worn in 
places as I could see. Her waist was well pulled in, her 
boots, as I noticed, not actively poor — but that way. 
She was below middle height, but the thing that struck 
me was the magnificent waterfall of smoky hair which 
tumbled below her waist, and the eyes of warm brown. 

She stooped again to stir the coals together. It was 
then something stirred within me — the hair, dusky* 
down the girl’s back. I put it from me as unspeakable 
— but it was there — deep inside me — stirring — stirring. 

She caught my look and with a little scream, not 
altogether affected, pulled her hair round with a semi- 
circular twist of the hand — a large, full, shadowy mo- 
tion — and in three spirals had rolled it into a bun low 
down on her neck. She was flushed but pale — sick 
pale after a minute. 

“Just think o’ me forgettin’ . . . you will be 
shocked.” 

The voice had a throatiness in it. Her nose was 
retrousse and rather impertinent but with something 
rabbity — other features regular though undistin- 
guished, and a good, rather full, bust. With her hair 


138 


PASSION 


down she looked — nearly wonderful. Up — nothing. 
I thought her beautiful. 

There was the scent of stale wallflowers in the room. 
I wondered where it came from but could see no flow- 
os. It awakened something in me, scent always did, 
but it was as though I had washed my face in dirty 
soap lather. There were those dusky wallflowers on 
the grey walls at home — but that was all far away, and 
different. 

Two heavy crimson curtains, matching the red win- 
dow-blinds, hung over a broad centre door to the next 
room from where there came the wail of what I took 
to be an animal. I once heard the monkey of an Italian 
organ-grinder cry like it when his master was angry 
with him. 

The girl’s face had enraptured. “Oh, the dearie — 
he’s awake !” 

She had dashed through the curtains showing a 
broad bed in the sudden opening, leaving me standing 
there, foolish. 

I looked at the photos. A tall lean German, high- 
collared, in a sort of naval uniform; an Italian with 
heavy rings and hair quiff ed down on the forehead 
with medals on his breast and some dogs; a great 
hipped woman in tights — but mostly men. 

She had come back. 

“Excuse me,” she said rather mincingly. “My darl- 
ing little boy. He’s such a dote.” 

“Yes,” I said, stupidly. 

“The most beautiful boy — you must just see him — '■} 
the most lovely pet in London.” ) 

“I should like to see him,” I said, blushing at the 
thought of going into her bedroom. 

She seemed to feel something. 


MISS ELLA 139 

“Excuse me.” There came to me the sounds of 
bustling as though she were tidying up the room. 

When I entered, it was standing up on the bed — her 
pet. It stood there, with its dark sallow eyes — the 
little bowed legs bending through its nightshirt — its 
fur-hair growing down to its eyes. It looked at me 
with those great animal slaty eyes, the shadows cob- 
webbing themselves around them — not wonderingly, 
but dead-ly — yes, but with appeal. I shrank, I always 
did, from distortion. But I managed to take its hand 
— its dreadful gnarled hand with the hands clenched, 
though I sickened as I did so. 

“Isn’t he a pet?” 

The girl made me a cup of tea, and cut some bread 
and butter, spreading the table with a cloth upon which 
a large pickle stain was smeared. From a rococo 
cabinet she produced for herself a bottle of Guinness’s 
stout with an apologetic giggle, and murmured some- 
thing about “nourishing.” With this and a square 
yellow junk of cheese and the bread and butter she 
made a pretty hearty meal, keeping up a flow of gen- 
teel conversation in which the words “nice,” “awful,” 
and “awfully nice” recurred again and again. She was 
obviously, though politely, curious about me and put 
several leading questions, to which I am afraid, hav- 
ing by this time learnt the lesson of the Cave that you 
mustn’t wear your heart on your sleeve, I returned 
plausible answers, in which I shaved the wind. It was 
almost as bad as what we called “telling the tale” in 
the Cave, and very uncomfortable it made me in conse- 
quence. However, I admitted my Irish birth with 
pride, to which she responded by saying that she had 
once known an Irish young gentleman of the name of 
Murphy . . . and then for some inexplicable reason 


140 


PASSION 


pulled up short. Of her own origin or connections 
she said nothing beyond the fact that she “worked in 
the West End.” 

Under the influence of the stout, the fire which 
had now burned up, and companionship, the earlier 
rather stilted periods of the young lady, in which re- 
marks about the weather, society, and the stage were 
the leading items, broke down into hints about the 
third floor back, “a yellow Japanesy,” and chapel folk 
on the ground back which she “never could hold with” 
— reciprocating which I began to talk about “The 
Cedars” and the shortcomings of what she had de- 
scribed succinctly as “a ’ome from ’ome,” for she some- 
times had difficulties with her “Us.” She, on her part, 
and producing another bottle of stout and screwing 
another cup of tea from the little biscuit teapot, seemed 
to gradually loosen, the brown eyes began to open 
confidentially, a coil of dark hair fell upon her neck, 
and even the fastenings of her dress, which hooked 
themselves in a curve down the side, showed a tendency 
to come undone. But of herself or her work she said 
nothing. 

Under the influence of my third cup I was about to 
launch out into vague reference to my schemes for 
the future with a possible reference to the Cave — when 
there stabbed itself across me Hawkling’s injunction 
to “keep your ears open and your mouth shut.” Even 
there Golgotha House followed me. My mouth and 
my heart shut like a trap. 

It was two o’clock in the morning, and for the first 
time since I had entered the room the question of bed- 
clothes came back. But the lady, who had caught the 
check and who looked at the cherubic clock on the 
mantelpiece, said hesitatingly, almost timorously: 


MISS ELLA 


141 


“You know, if you don’t mind — and really you can’t 
sleep in that bare room — why you can sleep here. . . . 
On the sofa,” she added hurriedly. 

My heart leaped. But Soho was doing its work. 

Then it came to me that I had not asked the girl 
who she was — I could not guess — I knew nothing, 
only that I could call her “Miss Ella.” 

She made me up a bed on the sofa — the hard sofa. 
And there I lay, looking at the shadows on the walls ; 
the pale gas-flares from the street lamp outside; the 
fire dying down ; with the thing, the thing half forgot- 
ten since Sherlingham, stirring — stirring. And then 
there came the thought that I was a stainless, pure 
knight, watching over my lady in an enchanted tower, 
and there was something about a sword on edge be- 
tween us. Through the heavy crimson curtains there 
came a soft purring — deep; regular; broken once I 
thought by a whimper like an animal in pain; and 
listening to that I fell asleep. 

It was my first night in Fear Street. 


XV 


CAPTAINS OF INDUSTRY 

It was near the end of my second year in the Cave, 
and beginning to sense some of its ramifications, in the 
Prospectus Department at least, I was acquiring a cer- 
tain satisfaction in my work, when there was the talk 
of a coming group flotation — one of Mandrill’s bigger 
schemes. Mandrill was making the Cave alive with 
his growlings, for he was always in a rage at these 
times. Everybody trembled before him. When the 
scent of the trail was strong in his nostrils, he seemed 
to be driven out of himself. 

My own department was much involved in this 
work; and Hawkling, who was beginning to lose his 
wind in the rush and tear of the new flotation and had 
much to do with the mechanical side of the work, 
sometimes preferred to send me upstairs to going him- 
self. For Mandrill “had got Hawkling in his eye,” 
as we said at the office; was watching him and his 
department. And Hawkling kept out of his way as 
far as he could. 

One day I had been sent up with some papers on an 
urgent telephone call from the Den, and as Mandrill 
was always angry if a messenger wasted time in knock- 
ing, I opened the massive oak door and passed through. 

“Wait !” growled Mandrill, waving me back behind 
the door-screen with the fighting, snapping dragons 
142 


CAPTAINS OF INDUSTRY 


143 


chasing themselves upon it, and forgot me. I drew 
back behind the screen and looked through the crevice 
of the hinges. 

Mandrill was leaning back in the half circle of the 
chair that clasped him at the top of the long crimson 
and gold table which was surrounded by men, whom 
I recognised as directors of Copper Finance, Limited, 
one of our bigger finance companies, what we called a 
“parent” company, used for the flotation of others. 
Nathan the Jew lawyer was there, his nose, swarthy, 
hooking out from between his close-set humourous 
eyes, beetled itself over the dyed black moustache and 
the teeth that showed themselves whitely through the 
lips which he always carried hungrily apart, as though 
he were nibbling something. He looked like a great, 
good-humoured rat as he smilingly scanned some docu- 
ment on the table before him, looking up every now 
and then at Mandrill who, with his arms sunk in the 
arm cushion of his chair was declaiming, declaiming, 
his voice, under stress, sometimes dropping to that 
curious whispering snarl, his head thrown back, the 
lips curling themselves from the strong yellow teeth 
and red gums. 

One other man there stood out. Vogel, the Ham- 
burg Jew, with his eagle nose, high bald skull, and 
thin wrinkled neck that seemed to turn upon itself. 
He sat there, crouching solemnly like those scavenger 
birds that sit upon the roofless death-towers of the Fire 
Worshippers, awaiting the body that gives them the 
signal to lollop down into the interiors to gorge. 

Him I knew by sight better than the others, for he 
was Mandrill’s familiar in the Cave. He was with 
Mandrill in all his schemes — a solemn blackguard — 
parsonic. 


144 


PASSION 


But the men who held me were the others — mostly 
big, well-developed men, though pigmies to Mandrill, 
and not so logical — so dangerous. Their silence, in- 
terned, was in queer contrast to the volcanic Mandrill, 
who stood out from them as he stood out from all his 
fellows. They were men of a type, the type that had 
been impressing itself upon me the longer I remained 
in the Cave — different from Mandrill who was a type 
to himself. They were square-foreheaded intellectual- 
looking men for the most part, with strong, quiet, 
almost honest eyes — fixed though, and with something 
in them of dead lakes. They might have been intel- 
lectuals were it not for those eyes, and something 
finished and sure in their expressions. Like Mandrill, 
they were groomed scrupulously, each tie being ad- 
justed to the centre of each white-slipped waistcoat, 
their frock coats fitting them like skins; their collars, 
like their boots, glossed. 

They carried confidence with them; men whom, if 
you were a little investor, you would trust with your 
last halfpenny and thank them for taking it — some of 
them pillars of their churches — law-abiding — stable — 
underpins of Empire. Men, as I was beginning to 
find out, with a nice code of business morals, minutely 
scrupulous, sometimes — splendidly ruthless, always. 
Nathan and Vogel were of a different breed. But 
these other men were “gentlemen.” 

You would not have picked these men out as business 
men — they looked too much “the gentleman” for that, 
with something almost puritanically “correct” in their 
faces, only that there was something dead-ly, unerring, 
and something contemptuous also. They were finan- 
ciers, leaders of high finance, with the contempt of 
the organiser for inefficiency. They were the new 


CAPTAINS OF INDUSTRY 


145 


type — the type of Big Business. They impressed me — 
yet left me uncertain. 

All eyes were turned on Mandrill at the head of 
the table — Mandrill curving in his great paws — the 
roar petering out into that snarl: 

“l tell you I’ll have a bishop ; by God ! an archbishop 
if I want him, on the board. Yes, Nathan,” as though 
the other had objected through his smiling teeth, “the 
Chief Rabbi himself. Every man has his price. This 
is business — big business. It means millions — and by 
Jupiter! it means Power.” 

The voice had tailed off, the scalp was twitching. 
But something had lighted itself in the eyes of the 
solemn-looking men around the table at the last word. 

“Power.” I heard the word often in the Cave — or 
if not the word, the idea behind it. Power . Money 
meant Power. 

“But what about Squid ?” 

It was the death voice of Vogel that hoarsed itself. 
At the name, all heads had fastened more strongly 
on Mandrill. 

“Squid.” 

Mandrill had repeated the word. “Squid.” He 
hesitated a moment. “I’ll squeeze Squid. I’ll cripple 
his brain as well as his backbone.” He laughed 
brutally. “This means the survival of the fittest. . . . 
Not now. ... Not this time. But . . . wait. . . . 
If this goes through we’ll try the greater Game. If 
we master copper we master the world.” 

At the trumpet blast of his voice through the cran- 
nies of the screen, there came back to me the stories 
I had heard about the Copper Man, as Mandrill was 
called in the City — the stories of his limitless wealth, 
of his Park Lane house with its private gymnasium 


146 


PASSION 


and boxing theatre where Mandrill, who was a leading 
member of the International Sports Club, and himself 
a skilled boxer and wrestler, was said to have staged 
all sorts of queer encounters and even to have battled 
three rounds against the then coloured champion of 
the world inside his private ring. Of his exaggerated 
Darwinism, of his ardent belief in struggle and elimi- 
nation in the evolution of mankind, and his hatred of 
charity. Of his Mosaic Christianity, his contempt for 
the aristocracy as for the democracy — his queer code 
of politics. 

It was fabulously reported that he was the son of 
a North of Ireland Scotswoman and a gorilla. It 
might not be true, but if it wasn’t, I felt it to be the 
most likely lie I had ever met, or, for that matter, 
have ever met. I had reason afterwards to think that 
the Scottish part of it at least was true, though nobody 
really knew much about Mandrill’s origins. 

As I looked at him he seemed to me the elemental 
man upon his walls, reincarnate. As I was slowly 
sensing down there among the prospectuses, he fought 
his battles elementally, ruthlessly, but with the cunning 
and the science of the civilised man superadded — 
fought in his own way and with his own peculiar 
method, the method of shock-tactics, those battles of 
the Age of Gold in the City jungle — battles, as I was 
beginning to learn, that were as ruthless as those of 
the Stone Age, except that men had exchanged the 
club for the bank balance. By the time he was through 
with his competitors, there was nothing left on the 
floor of the Cave but their dried bones. He spewed 
them out and left them. . . . 

“Squid . . . Squid. . . .” The name hissed itself 
around the table even as I thought, intruded itself in 


CAPTAINS OF INDUSTRY 


147 


sentence after sentence, with that other word “Copper” 
— that brazen word of power, for by now the others 
had joined in. . . . 

“We can do what we like with the others — they 
don't count in Copper — all except Squid. . . Vogel 
was croaking again. 

“All except Squid. . . 

In the Cave we sometimes heard about the shadowy 
monster that was taking shape somewhere out there 
in the deeps of American finance; taking shape, not 
actively, the monster which in my mind took the shape 
of the thing that had sucked at my father — but he 
was there all the time. One felt him lurking there 
more by instinct than actual evidence — but the name 
had the habit of getting into Mandrill's letters and 
sometimes, though rarely, showed itself in the news- 
papers, but always in connection with copper. People 
mentioned it under their breath, but it was more an 
influence than a living thing. 

But Mandrill had broken in again, drowning Vogel's 
croak. 

“Squid . . . we’ll see if Squid can play the Great 
Game with Golgotha House — if he can stand the gaff. 
We’ll try him out. If he can win I give him best.” 

Mixed, doubtful as I was becoming in my attitude 
to Big Business, there was something in the blast of 
Mandrill’s voice as he said “Great Game” which sent 
the blood pulsing through my veins — pulsing towards 
him. As he said “Squid,” my heart warmed towards 
him, or would have warmed towards him but that he 
had killed my father . . . and because of something 
else. 

I saw this man daily at this time — I feared him — 
not in the slavish, cringing way of the others — but I 


148 


PASSION 


feared him and liked him too — admired him above all 
— him who was so different to all those others — who 
stood out by himself. However absurd it may sound, 
my fear came from the feeling, something deep down 
in me, that some day I should have to fight him. He 
was something polaric to me. 

It was absurd. I was sixteen, one of his youngest 
junior clerks, almost an office-boy — a little fifteen 
shilling a week clerk whose face he scarcely remem- 
bered. He ... he was Mandrill the Copper Man, 
whose name stood on or behind the prospectuses of all 
copper companies as it stood upon many others. But 
I knew even then that some day I should have to 
fight him — I felt something of it that first day when 
my uncle brought me into the Cave. You know the 
feeling when you first meet a future antagonist-^that 
sure feeling of battle. 

I did not forget that even now, but the next moment 
it was overborne by the consciousness of big game 
afoot; of huntings and trappings; of ambuscades and 
slaughterings — and of the bigger battle of life behind: 
those hazy indiscriminate shapes of the democracy, of 
the people, setting themselves up against other shapes 
like cloud forms on the horizon — of the burr-r-r of 
those other things which in the 90’s were just begin- 
ning to mutter, inarticulate. 

The fight-lust had leaped in my heart. I was part 
of the Cave, of the Great Game, of Big Business. 

Then I remembered my loneliness. I remembered 
my poverty, and, though I feared and admired, I 
hated. I admired Mandrill’s black satin tie and the 
great emerald in it that struck fire from his eyes. I 
searched the table and admired these men’s clothes — 
precise, neat, sufficient — admired their expressions. 


CAPTAINS OF INDUSTRY 


149 


guarantees of law and order. The set of their collars 
as the cut of their trouser legs fascinated me. But I 
hated too. 

Already I knew these men spent on a meal what 
they paid me for a week’s work. I did not forgive 
that. I knew they regarded me — if they regarded me 
— and Hawkling and the rest as pawns in the game. 
I did not forgive that. I was nothing. My father 
and mother were dead. I had no friends. I had 
nearly lost hope. Ambition was still but a fitful flame 
within. But I did not forgive or forget. 

I had my wretched little fourth floor back in Fear 
Street. I was always cold at night and often hungry; 
and the new ready-made “29s. 6d. Our Style” suit 
on my back from the ready-made ready money man in 
the Tottenham Court Road had been paid out of my 
stomach — always long and lean and hungry. They 
lived in Park Lane and Berkeley Square — I — I lived 
in Fear Street. To these men and their fine clothes 
and well-nourished frames I felt as I had felt at Sher- 
lingham — I hated respectability, power ; money — but I 
bowed to them too. It was incongruous and indefensi- 
ble — but there it was, as was the money, the power, 
and the respectability. I cowered behind my screen 
and hated ... all except Mandrill. 

I never explained to myself why I excepted him, 
but I did — he was a great natural hunting animal at 
least. 

Even then his philosophy was coming to me. Power 
— Money. But only money because of the power it 
brought. The world had a golden mainspring I heard 
him say. Money. Yet he had killed my father to 
get it. . 

But it was all in the game. 


XVI 


LITTLE BUSINESS 

As may be imagined, my finances at this time were 
nicely balanced, despite the three guineas I had re- 
ceived at different times for “ideas” which to my 
pride were being used in the Prospectus Department 
and which had drawn me a little out of my obscurity, 
even Mandrill by a lucky accident hearing of it and 
complimenting me. But they had gone in “sundries.” 

When at the end of my first year in the Cave I got 
that extra five shillings a week, it seemed to me that 
I was a millionaire incipient and even began to feel 
appreciation of Mr. Crosbill as he sat in his golden 
cage. I calculated that there would be some difficulty 
in dealing with the superfluous two halfcrowns and 
on the first pay day opened an account with Her 
Majesty's Government through the post-offifce, in 
which, to avoid temptation, I put my first five shill- 
ings behind those black ruled bars of my early days. 
I made certain lightning calculations, in which 5 s. 
multiplied by 52 figured prominently. . . . 

Then there came complications. My best trousers 
were on their last legs — literally, and in spite of the 
fact that my 29s. 6d. suit had been advertised as of 
“West End Cut and Materials,” the right jacket sleeve 
and the last three or four buttonholes of the waist- 
coat front were getting more like a looking-glass every 
150 


LITTLE BUSINESS 


151 


day. That 29s. 6d. suit in the “Value for Money, 
Limited's” centre window in the Tottenham Court 
Road, from a prospect had become a necessity. They 
had two systems at the “Value for Money” place — one 
“the cash down;” the other “the easy payment.” So 
my “29s. 6d.” would really cost me 33s. before I had 
finished, all of which would spoil the symmetry of my 
bank balance. 

I was in the middle of my “easy payments” when 
the five shillings a week from my uncle suddenly 
stopped without warning. I had not had the courage 
when I shook the dust of Finsbury Park off the soles 
of my feet to ask my uncle to turn over the little 
principal to me, though as my father's only child I had 
the right ; and indeed he had been regular in the pay- 
ments out of my father's wreck, sending me the money 
each week by postal order (it was the only communica- 
tion between us) so that the stoppage surprised me 
considerably. 

I wrote to him. No answer. I wrote to him again, 
a matter of some difficulty because I boggled over the 
“Your affectionate Nephew” at the end. I wasn't 
affectionate — to him. But I supposed this also to be 
a white lie — so I lied as whitely as I was able. No 
answer. 

Matters were getting desperate, for though I had 
still a little money in the Savings Bank I had sworn 
to myself never to touch that last seven shillings, and 
my weekly halfcrown at the “Value for Money” was 
due on the Saturday. So I wrote to him again. The 
postman didn’t often come to Fear Street and he 
didn't come now. 

Then I went to see my uncle in my lunch hour at 
his hemp warehouse in Ironmonger Lane, where he 


152 


PASSION 


held a snug permanency as London agent for a firm 
of manufacturers, something into which he had grown 
mechanically from boyhood — one of those businesses 
that go by themselves. 

The size of the place, the staff of clerks, and the 
towering bales would have impressed me if I hadn’t 
been in the Cave. The Cave dwarfed it all, but the 
darkening vistas of bales, the porters taking them 
down and wheeling them to the elevator on little hand- 
trolleys, and above all the intimate scents, like that of 
new rope, gave an air of substance to the place which 
impressed me all the same. 

My uncle Jerry was sitting at his desk in his private 
room, a pen poised irresolute in his thin, blue-veined 
hand. He looked more bewildered than ever with the 
two points of hair standing up and slightly askew as 
though he had been running his hand along the top 
of his high, knobbly skull. As I saw him, I felt he 
would have avoided seeing me if possible, if he had 
dared, but could not summon up the courage, and so 
he received me in his melancholy fashion. 

I had scarcely entered when he mumbled something 
about forgetting — forgetting; and the French motto 
in Hawkling’s room ran across my eyes: “Qui s’ excuse 
s’ accuse,” for the Cave was fine-edging me. '‘For- 
getting” — two weeks. But I believed him too. I was 
still believing. 

“He would send it on . . . had no change at the 
moment . . . was sending to the bank.” I wanted to 
get away from him as soon as possible, but my poverty 
made me bold, and I said I would wait until the 
messenger came back if he didn’t mind. “My rent, 
my six shillings, was overdue from the last week and 
there was 2s. 6d. to be paid the Value for Money on 


LITTLE BUSINESS 


153 


Saturday. I had never owed anything . . . and he 
would understand. . . .” 

As I spoke, almost inarticulate, and, for no reason 
in the world, ashamed, as though I owed him the ten 
shillings, I saw the little black centres of his grey be- 
wildered eyes lose themselves. Amazed, I looked at 
him — surely there were tears. He swung round to 
me with, for the first time in his life, something like 
resolution in his bearing: 

“My boy ... I haven’t a penny in the world. I 
haven’t my fare to take me home.” 

I nearly broke down too when he said “my boy.” 
They were the first genuine words I had ever heard 
from him, and they took me off my balance. . . . But 
he was speaking, rapidly, disconnectedly . . . some- 
thing about Golden Stars: 

. . I had 750 shares in the original company 
. . . Mandrill recommended . . . and when it broke 
I came into the reconstruction for a thousand . . . 
Mandrill said ... it looked all right after Mandrill’s 
speech at the Grand Orient meeting and I had done 
so well on my Constrictors . . . and afterwards, when 
the shares fell, I thought it a good chance to buy 
heavily to recoup . . . bought for a rise . . . but the 
bottom dropped out of the market . . . and there was 
that cover to be met every contango day and I sold 
some of my other stuff — even Consols — to meet it. I 
had to have the money . . . should have been ruined 
if I couldn’t have fulfilled my engagements. And there 
were your aunt’s bills . . .” he added, irrelevantly. 
He paused, strained for a moment or two after the 
words and continued “and there was your father’s 
money . . . I’m afraid . . . that . . .” he floun- 
dered : “you see I had to meet that last cover . . . and 


154 


PASSION 


I borrowed it. . . He halted, then his eyes began 
to glisten — he looked more and more like my father 
I thought. . . . 

“But I swear. You shall have every penny back . . . 
there are my Westingtons, and Mandrill says they 
will repay all ... I will get back all I’ve lost and a 
lot more. You shall have your father’s money back 
twice over — I could sell enough on even a pound mar- 
ket rise on the Westingtons to keep me going . . 
his face fell again — “but they dropped to-day. . . . 

“Craddock, outside, has taken the last money I had 
in the world for his salary. I’ve tried everything to 
get some money. We’ve had nothing at The Cedars’ 
since yesterday. Our credit is exhausted — sucked 
out.” 

He looked sucked out as he said it. And he was 
hungry — I could see that he was hungry. I knew the 
symptoms. 

I suppose it was with some such idea as this in my 
mind I took the Savings Bank Book from my pocket, 
in which seven shillings stood to the credit of John 
Tempest, Esq., Clerk. I went out to the General 
Postoffice and took out five shillings from my hoard, 
that sacred hoard, and coming back laid it silently on 
the table before him. 

Even in that moment I did not give him all. In a 
sense, and despite the passionate impulsive way I some- 
times had of doing things, I could be calculating 
enough and I said that my rent must come first. I had 
a quixotic feeling that I was doing a fine thing, a 
heroic thing, with a lively sense that I had not eaten 
since breakfast and that I had only eighteen-pence to 
carry me over the next couple of days, and perhaps 
visioned my uncle falling on my neck at least, for in 


LITTLE BUSINESS 


155 


my own way I was incurably romantic. But I really 
believe it was heaping coals of fire upon his head that 
had quite as much to do with it as pity. Yet I disliked 
the fellow. 

He didn’t do anything of the kind. He simply be- 
gan to cry. Tears I fancy came easier to him than I 
had suspected. 

But he wouldn’t take the money. He forced it 
back on me — I, angry, at being baulked from the coals 
of fire, and yet secretly glad, for I had the “Value for 
Money” and Mrs. S. in my mind. But there was 
something heroic in the little weak smile on his face 
as he refused. 

And so I went back to Golgotha House, little think- 
ing that he and I would not meet again until that 
bitter January day ten years later, when I said good- 
bye to him in his steep unnamed grave in the Kensal 
Green cemetery. 

For that was London. 

When I got back to the office, I found the usual 
two or three feverish disconsolate-looking individuals 
on the long settees, or watching hungrily through the 
brass bars into the heart of the place. Smeeter, now 
a weedier, whiter Smeeter, who seemed to grow in his 
glass case as if it had been a forcing house, was grin- 
ning broadly and pointing over his shoulder with a 
thumb towards Hawkling’s room. “Oh my eye!” he 
said, writhing with delight. “Here’s a go! Oh my 
eye! ’E’s got old Skinsole with ’im and another 
fellow” — Smeeter was always irreverent — “you should 
just ’a seen the little gent’s topper and frock coat all 
togged out to come the heavy in the City. Crikey! 
You should just hear old Tommy Didimus, an’ they 


156 PASSION 

ain’t arf a goin’ of it inside.” I left him, still con- 
vulsed. 

As I walked towards Hawkling’s department, there 
came to me a confused sound of voices, one voice 
piping itself over the others. As I went into Hawk- 
ling’s private room in response to his ring, I found 
the Reverend Skinsole, his large rather vacant face 
framed in the Mormon-like whiskers that met under 
his chin; his eyes, grey and staring, reminding me of 
my father’s. He was speaking rapidly, in an expostu- 
lation which was checkered by high, piping vitupera- 
tion from the little man at his side, a podgy square- 
headed man with short chopped side-whiskers, hair 
oiled and smoothed, and a really terrible blue silk tie 
and frock coat. He carried a large top-hat in his hand 
with which he sometimes gesticulated to Hawkling, 
who sat at his desk dejectedly alert. 

“Here we have a man, Sir,” said the Reverend 
Thomas, in his large confidential voice to nobody in 
particular; “here we have a man, Sir, who has scraped 
and saved — who has . . . 

“Toiled and moiled,” erupted the little man. . . . 

But Hawkling had held up his hand and won a 
momentary silence, during which he asked me for the 
share ledger of the Westington Wonder Copper Mine, 
Limited, of which he was Secretary. 

The voice of the little man followed me out through 
the door and it was still going like an enraged phono- 
graph when I returned, bearing the great green leather- 
bound ledger of the Westington, and stood behind 
Hawkling awaiting his further orders. 

“Yes, Sir, toiled and moiled — in me little oil shop 
in the Seven Sisters Road — thirty-two year in the one 
’ouse . . . scraping here and scratching there ... to 


LITTLE BUSINESS 


157 


keep a ’ome together over our 'eds. An’ w’en my 
missus asks me: 'Halbert — wot is the Westington 
Wonder doing?' wot am I to tell ’er? That's wot I 
arsk." 

"You see," the Reverend Skinsole broke in, "you 
see the case of Mr. Craggs here is the case of many 
other members of my congregation. And I naturally 
feel myself more or less responsible. Mr. Mandrill, 
assured me in the beginning that there wasn't the 
slightest risk . . . though I’m bound to add he said 
that every man had to take a sporting chance some- 
times . . . and I must say I and my people did very 
well out of the Constrictors which we bought on his 
advice. . . . Pidgin cleared at the top of the market 
and retired on it. . . . It isn’t so much that there are 
still no dividends as that the shares stand now at 
only 13s. 6d. . . ." 

"Yes," piped Craggs, "I wanted to sell out when 
they topped the £2 and so did Jenkins — and 'ere we are 
— a pretty kettle of fish — landed with the shares. . . ” 

"Oh, well, we're not gamblers, you know, Mr. 
Craggs," Hawkling said, mildly remonstrant. 

"Gamblers. No. I am an investor, and when I 
invest my ’ard earned cash, naturally I expect some 
retufn. . . ." 

"But you don't realise my position, Mr. Hawkling, 
as the pastor of a church," the Reverend Skinsole 
inserted. "I have my duty as a Christian pastor 
towards my flock. It is a terrible responsibility. It 
was on my advice Mr. Craggs and others put their 
money into the Westington Wonder . . . and you re- 
membered Mr. Mandrill promised me a directorship 
on the company that never matured." Skinsole's eyes 
were getting wider and more wandering, whilst as I 


158 


PASSION 


noticed, the little hard eyes of Craggs grew smaller 
and smaller. But Hawkling had come forward in his 
chair and with something of his older self was speak- 
ing: 

“I quite understand, Mr. Skinsole. Mr. Mandrill 
understands. We all understand — and so far as that 
directorship is concerned, though it has nothing to do 
Avith the matter, really, that has only been postponed. 
Now the price of the shares on the market is a negligi- 
ble quantity for investors . . .’’ he paused significantly, 
“as apart from mere gamblers” 

“Gamblers. Oh, dear no !" said Mr. Craggs, whose 
eyes were beginning to open themselves again. 

“ . . . Quite so. That being the case and the 
shares having dropped for no reason in the world but 
lack of confidence in shareholders who are only gam- 
blers, and a desire to realise their money quickly, with 
the consequent flooding of the market with the shares, 
the company is as sound as ever. ,, 

“But wot about the mine, Sir ?" interrogated Craggs: 
“you know the ‘City Sentinel' said as ’ow the Westing- 
ton . . ." he stumbled . . . “ 'ere it is," he said pro- 
ducing from the tail of his frock coat one of the new- 
est financial papers, which at this time were every day 
making their appearance. He set it under Hawkling’s 
nose, that thinly curved organ which conveyed an in- 
describable suggestion of weakness, pointing to a 
paragraph under “Answers to Correspondents:" 
“Westington Wonders — The reply to your query rests 
in the Public Prosecutor’s recent definition of a mine: 
‘A mine is a hole in the ground with nothing at the 
bottom of it but a lie. . . .’ " 

“Yes," said Hawkling quietly as he returned the 
paper — “and perhaps you don’t know that one of the 


LITTLE BUSINESS 


159 


representatives of that paper has already been here to 
try and blackmail us — but he wasn’t worth buying off 
— that is,” he added hurriedly, “if we did that sort of 
thing ; and The Owl’ only yesterday recommended the 
shares highly — said they were ridiculously low at pres- 
ent prices — ridiculously low.” 

“That is true enough,” confirmed Mr. Craggs. 

“You know we still have the mine, intact, and after 
all the mine’s the thing. We haven’t yet got to the 
producing stage — and — I lay all the cards on the table 
for you — the manager, Mr. Hughes, is confident of 
early and more than satisfactory returns so soon as we 
can get the new electric pumps going and the extra 
fifty-stamp battery put up. Then there is the question 
as to whether the battery heads shall weigh 1,050 or 
only 800 lbs. and the question of the process to be 
used. . . .” 

As Hawkling here plunged into a mass of technical 
details, I noticed that both his auditors followed him 
with ever-increasing interest — Skinsole’s eyes return- 
ing to their normal size and Graggs’ opening out bit 
by bit. When he got really thoroughly involved in 
the details of a new oil process for treating the copper 
tailings, as opposed to older methods, both the share- 
holders had lost all doubts; and finally when he con- 
cluded by some rapid figuring upon a piece of paper 
in which he calculated output and gross returns, both 
were smiling, the Reverend Skinsole letting his fingers 
wander gently in his tangle of whisker, and Craggs 
setting his hat on the table for greater comfort. 

As they were backing out, reassured, the Reverend 
Skinsole, his face now large and genial, with his little 
friend bobbing and smiling by his side, paused in the 
doorway: 


160 


PASSION 


“But, oh, by the way, Mr. Hawkling, this is the 
second reconstruction of the Westington . . . when 
the original company failed and we found fresh capital, 
Mr. Mandrill told us at the Grand Orient meeting, as 
you have now told us, that we should reach the pro- 
ducing stage within a few months, and the company 
has been reconstructed once since then. I hope you 
will prove a truer prophet.” He laughed with a sort 
of jocular anxiety. 

“Oh, now there can be no doubt: then we were only 
experimenting; now we know pretty well where we 
stand . . . and since then we struck that new reef 
which sent the shares rocketing upwards. It is only 
a question of time before again they go rocketing 
upwards. . . . 

“Rocketing upwards,” chimed the Reverend Skin- 
sole after him, smiling. 

“Rocketing upwards . . .” murmured Mr. Craggs. 
“Of course: only a question of time . . . rocketing 
upwards.” His eyes were turned above as though he 
were watching the flight of something. 

As the door closed upon them, Hawkling turned to 
me as he collapsed in his chair looking, as he sometimes 
did, like a pricked balloon. . . . 

“Westington Wonders . . . rocketing upwards. . . .” 

He laughed. 

“Where have you been?” 

I told him I had been to see my uncle. 

“Say, young Tempest, your uncle's got it in the neck. 
You know the Golden Star's gone bust.” He looked 
at me with a certain perilous satisfaction. 

“Let's have a look at the Book of the Dead and see 
what his share-holding was.” 

I went out to fetch “The Book of the Dead,” the 


LITTLE BUSINESS 


161 


category into which the share register of the Golden 
Star had entered. So Mandrill had finished him — 
though he probably hardly knew about it, and cared 
less. It was all in the game. And they all came to the 
Cave. 

My uncle's story was the recurring story in the Cave 
— a story splashed here and there with gold, as in the 
case of the Constrictor Copper Mine and half a dozen 
others which had made fortunes for the lucky inves- 
tors. Now, I could read the story, for I was gradually 
mastering the intricacies of the Cave. My uncle, like 
others, dazzled by the pyrotechnics of the prospectus, 
had invested in Golden Stars; had found the first 
capital, which had gone, a little here, a little there, 
nobody quite knew how. For there had been the pro- 
moter’s profit (that was money to Mandrill for his 
trouble in “imagining” and floating the company) ; in 
Directors’ fees (partly Mandrill again, who as Chair- 
man drew the lion’s share) ; for Secretary and offices 
(Mandrill again). Then there were the Consulting 
Engineers’ fees and the fees for mining engineers’ 
reports, from all of which Mandrill drew his pickings, 
for in pursuance of his big centralisation idea, he re- 
tained his own engineers, men whom at that time I 
assumed to be entirely honest, who looked honest, and 
who probably were as honest as they were allowed to 
be. Anyhow nobody could show that their reports 
had been dishonest — and as Mandrill sometimes said 
to dissenting or difficult shareholders: “In a sense, no 
mining engineer can see further than his pick;” and 
there was always the dazzlement of the Constrictor 
Group upon which the same engineers had reported. 

Then there had been costly machinery, which, as I 
now began to find out, was in a way Mandrill again. 


162 


PASSION 


for at the Cave, following the idea of centralising 
everything under one roof — a perfectly sound idea in 
theory — we had our own Buying Department through 
which the orders for the machinery of all Mandrill’s 
companies were placed. And this buying department 
in its turn charged its commissions as middlemen and 
there had been talk of “secret commissions” from the 
machine manufacturing firms themselves. 

All this before the mine had been properly developed 
and tested — upon the report of the mining engineer 
alone; so that by the time they had their machinery 
ordered there was no ore for the batteries to crush and 
no money to develop the mine to produce it — no 
“working capital,” as it was called. 

Then in the case of companies like the Golden Star, 
there would be one of the big days in the Grand 
Orient room when Mandrill, dominating, convincing, 
would take the chair, and would handle the crowd of 
angry frightened shareholders before him — butcher, 
greengrocer and city clerk — colonel, clergyman, and 
lawyer — in his own masterly, mastering way. He was 
never apologetic, was Mandrill, in these moments — 
only assured. And so the company would be recon- 
structed, and fresh capital found, the shareholders 
crowding forward with passion under the magnetism 
of the big man to send more money to save the first — 
or debentures might be issued. And there would be 
fresh independent engineers’ reports and (Mandrill 
again) fresh profits for finding the fresh capital, and 
so the company would be put on its legs — until the 
next reconstruction or final liquidation, leaving behind 
it its traces in bankrupted tradesmen, broken little pro- 
fessional men, crippled merchants like my uncle — ^dis- 
criminating, bloody, as a field of battle. 


LITTLE BUSINESS 


163 


This ate into me. I wasn’t particularly sorry for my 
uncle — not at all for my aunt and cousins. I ,was still 
enough of a prig to feel that it was righteous^etribu- 
tion. Nor did I think of my own money buried with 
the rest. It was the hazard of the game and the un- 
certainty of Big Business that frightened me. 

It seemed only yesterday I had driven out of the fog 
into the splendour of “The Cedars,” had seen my uncle 
resting on his business, a sure man, an alderman of 
the City of London; only that morning I had caught 
the scent of prosperity in Ironmonger Lane . . . and 
now all had vanished in a market fraction into the 
maw of the Cave. 

And then there was Skinsole, and Craggs . . . and 
even Hawkling. 

I looked round in the office and even “The ’Oof- 
bird” no longer seemed secure in his cage of gold. . . . 
Hawkling already was rocky . . . only “the Jackal” 
in his pulpit and old Pippin with his bite and stay 
looked as if they could hold on. Supposing that with 
Hawkling, Mandrill “fired” me ! Already young as I 
was, a good deal of the work in connection with his 
department fell on me, for I had determined to master 
everything there was to master, and his failure might 
involve me. 

What would become of me in the streets of London ? 
and there was that money due to the “Value for 
Money” and my rent and. . . . 

The things crowded on me one after another, as in- 
deed they had begun to crowd upon me even before 
the finish of my uncle, only now they were more immi- 
nent. I had no friends. I was alone. I had heard of 
the Embankment. . . . 

These things followed me home. They came into 


164 


PASSION 


the bus with me . . . they dogged my footsteps on 
the broken stairs of the old house . . . they came with 
me into my little bare room . . . and clung to me on 
my iron stretcher. 

In the nights that followed, I awoke shivering under 
my bedclothes, with fear, haunting fear, clutching at 
me with its skinny clammy fingers. Poverty . . . the 
streets . . . the streets. Always the streets. I feared 
for my health — for my place — for everything. In the 
mornings, when the sun came up, these fears left me, 
but as the shadows drew down with the evenings in the 
twilight of the Cave they also drew down upon me; 
until they clogged me and smothered me in the Fear 
Street house. 

A cough, and I was in a paroxysm that consumption 
waited to drag me under. It was already threatening 
Smeeter the doctor had said. ... I remember one 
night springing from my bed in an accession of fear 
and bathing my neck violently in cold water because, 
feeling the glands behind my ears, I believed I had 
cancer. . . . 

Dreams of the past — of the old days — of my little 
bedroom in Ireland — of my father and mother, who, 
now beatified, returned to me. The old days. The old 
days before I knew of London and Big Business. And 
I. Alone. . . . 

Fear is the only hell, 

i 


XVII 


SOCIETY 

I had been another year in London. I had not made 
a friend in my three years there unless I could call 
Miss Ella a friend — perhaps she was, though I saw 
her rarely. 

I am sitting again alone in my room, in the little 
poky room with the one window in the corner, the 
iron bed folded against the wall draped respectably 
with the magenta quilt I had bought second-hand from 
the pawnshop at the corner of Crook Street; near it, 
the little pail and floorcloth I had borrowed from Mrs. 
S. "to do for myself.” The walls are still stripping 
themselves, but the worst of the hanging rags have 
been pulled off, and over the little marble mantelpiece 
— all the mantelpieces in Fear Street were marble — 
stained and scored, my father and mother look down 
at me, my mother indifferent even in photo-death, my 
father kindly. Christ, to whom I turned more and 
more in my loneliness despite a slatey-grey pamphlet 
entitled "Did Jesus Really Exist ?” which a bearded 
man with one of those long, free-thinking, clear-shaven 
upper lips had inserted in my hand one Sunday after- 
noon at the Marble Arch — speaks out of a mist on 
Olivet, whilst facing Him is a meretricious damsel 
in a blonde wig with sparkling blue eyes, heavily leaded, 
with a slender V in her dress, not too deeply cut, 
whom I had seen in a little picture shop in the Totten- 
165 


166 


PASSION 


ham Court Road and whom, having inflamed my heart, 
I had purchased for the ridiculous sum of sixpence. I 
beat the man down from tenpence, for I was now an 
adept in this sort of thing, though still too shy. I had 
cut off the advertisement of Craddy’s Highflier Cigar- 
ettes at the bottom. 

The room is not without manliness. There is a 
coloured plate of “British Butterflies” from the “Boy’s 
Own Paper” which at this time was my guide, philoso- 
pher, and friend — also another of a swordsman and 
net-thrower in the Roman Coliseum, the spectators 
with the thumbs turned down, and near the window, 
where I could see it, a dumbbell chart which I used in- 
frequently, but, when I did, with concentrated energy. 

In an excess of athleticism I had put up a little 
coloured plate of my famous countryman, Mr. John 
L. Sullivan, the boxer — but had taken him down — he 
jarred with the Christ and my religion. (My religion 
at this time, like my thoughts about Big Business and 
about things in general, was becoming slightly mixed. ) 

A little blackened table and two chairs, one doubtful, 
completed the room. 

I remember that December night when I sat there, 
listening to the drive of the hail needles on my window, 
in my fireless room. I had no fire because I had run 
out of coal and money — and with one of those cheap 
tin lamps, with the reflectors, waited for the time to go 
to bed, for the streets were too bad that night even for 
me. The tin piano was going — it was always going. 
It was playing “Daisy Bell,” to which “Ta-ra-ra-boom- 
de-ay” had just given place. At least someone with 
an up-to-date mind was singing the former: 

“Disey, Disey, gi’ me yer answer dew — 

Fm half crisy, orl for the luv o’ yew ...” 


SOCIETY 


167 


whilst still deeper, on the ground floor, there rolled 
another sort of song ... it came and went fitfully 
like a hymn. 

The voices of the children from the streets were 
stilled by the hail, but the banging of doors and an 
odd scream sometimes came up to me. I knew that 
Mauri the Japanese was working in his room, for I 
had passed him on the stairs as I often did, a yellow 
shadow, silent, but grinning, sometimes followed by 
a skirt — a model or what not. From the room next 
to my own I could hear McWhirter, the little Amer- 
ican-Scotsman, with eyes like two cavities burnt in 
his head, hissing something at his wife who looked 
like the original of all the Indian maidens, and whom 
I thought of as Minnehaha — whilst he crooned his 
little boy to sleep. He was always hissing at her, even 
when he was painting the impressionist pictures for 
which he scarcely found a buyer. 

The Fear Street house was not a house — it was a 
thing — living, pregnant — a sort of coral island, sub- 
merged, with its multitudinous animals working under 
and over and through it. In the two years I had lived 
in it I knew only my own wing, and I had never 
spoken to anyone except Miss Ella and Mrs. S. It was 
Fear Street’s way. If you “wanted to keep yerself 
to yerself,” as Miss Ella phrased it, why you could. 
I did. 

There were other wings which branched off into 
unknown darknesses, corridors from which came the 
gleam of yellow lights, haunted by the smell of red 
herrings, with a never-ending movement behind the 
doors — but none on the stairs. When the children 
poured out in the morning they stayed out, except for 
infrequent meals when they came back to the shrilling 


168 


PASSION 


of “Bernard” or “Jeanette” or “Lucia”; with Willys 
and Marys interspersed — for the streets were their 
playground. But as you went through the passages, 
you heard things, felt shadows, saw them creeping 
towards you, and vanishing. At least I did. 

Miss Ella I had seen more and more infrequently. 
She had developed a great shyness of me, or I of her, 
I don’t know which. I could hear her come home late, 
very late, at night, sometimes even in the early morn- 
ing, and once, when she had forgotten her key, there 
had been some talk and vague complaints about her — 
something I could not grasp. But as Mrs. S. said, 
when she brought me up a couple of bloaters, “we all 
have to live.” 

As I was sitting there in my room, there was a 
gentle knock on the door and a cough, a polite cough. 
I always kept my door locked — it was my way — so I 
went over and opened it. 

A worn, spruce young man, with dark sparkling 
eyes, waxed moustache, and fashionable clothes, was 
standing there holding a cigarette between his stained 
fingers, from one of which a diamond flashed. It was 
the occupier of the ground back, Mr. Considine 
Clarence, as I had heard Mrs. S. call him — I only 
knew the names of these people through her. He 
seemed embarrassed and kept lunging forward ecstat- 
ically and drawing back again for no visible reason. 

We both felt slightly embarrassed, until the young 
man produced a green crocodile pocket-book from the 
inside of his jacket, fumbled in it a moment, and with 
a not ungraceful inclination of the head, handed me a 
card on which was printed in black-letter characters: 
“Mr. Considine Clarence,” and in the corner, in smaller 
letters: “Veterinary Surgeon, etc.” 


SOCIETY 169 

We shook hands upon the strength of the introduc- 
tion. 

“Mrs. Clarence — ahem ! — my wife, thought you 
might like a little music — she said you looked musical.” 
Then, cryptically: “we are . . . very ... on the 
ground floor.” 

This visit astonished me as much as Robinson 
Crusoe would have been if an angel had called upon 
him. Nobody in my three years of London, except 
Miss Ella, had ever invited me anywhere. I did not 
want to know anybody. Also I had that silly Irish 
pride which made me ashamed of the remains of my 
tea — I am sure it was red herring — but I thanked him 
and went down, leaving the door open behind me in 
my agitation. 

Mr. Clarence politely refrained from smoking as 
we walked down to the ground floor back, holding 
his half extinguished cigarette between his first and 
second fingers and waving it in the air as he introduced 
me, still with that indefinable air of gentility, to the 
bosom of his family; there coming to me as he opened 
the door a low, heavily-moulded fender of scratched 
brass before the brightly-burning fire, the hearthstone 
littered with cigarette ends, and a cage of white mice 
over in the corner with the tiny beasts running in and 
out like little white flags, their ginky, pinky eyes watch- 
ing me. 

“Mr. Tempest — Mrs. Clarence. Mr. Tempest — 
Miss Selina Quest — Miss Cattie Quest” — and with a 
large but deprecatory flourish of the cigarette, which 
he had now begun to smoke again, drawing the smoke 
noiselessly down to his lungs from which he expelled 
it thinly with a wheezing sound, “my kiddies;” this 
last to an assortment of black-eyed, straight-haired 


170 


PASSION 


children, obviously unpresentable, who were tumbling 
on and over the sofa of faded blue satin ; the mutilated 
but substantial chairs; and the other furniture, all of 
which had an air of having seen better days ; the third 
youngest regaling himself with an impassioned fan- 
tasia upon the open piano, played with drum technique. 
They gave an indefinable feeling of “the Yellow 
Peril I don’t know why. 

The noise was deafening, but seemed to have no 
effect upon the serenity of Mrs. Clarence, whose 
smooth convex forehead and mild light-grey eyes 
seemed set above these things. She had a slightly 
untidy air with her black lank hair breaking loose low 
on her neck and a once beautiful dress of grey silk, 
going at the seams — but it suited her. As for Miss 
Selina Quest and her sister, two tall, good-looking fair 
girls — soft-faced and “dovey” — they seemed too in- 
vertebrate to resent anything as they clung, each with 
an arm around Mrs. Clarence’s waist. 

Lolling in one corner of the sofa was a big man in 
a shiny frock coat, who was introduced vaguely as 
“Big Reggie,” to which, with admirable self-control, 
he responded by a movement of his rolling eye which 
looked at me momentarily over the bridge of an enor- 
mous roguish nose, balanced on one side of his face. 
I got the impression later in the evening, I cannot say 
how, that Big Reggie was a sort of relation to Mr. 
Clarence ; that there had once been a “Little Reggie 
that he had originally been “a gentleman that he had 
been ruptured in his youth and that either on account 
of that or an incurable laziness, he had never worked 
since. 

Another awkward silence ensued upon the introduc- 


SOCIETY 171 

tions, which Mr. Clarence broke by asking, apparently 
apropos of nothing, if I were fond of animals? 

I said I was, and was introduced individually to 
the white mice, in which, for politeness' sake, I pro- 
ceeded to take a spasmodic interest. 

Mr. Clarence informed me that he had just finished 
with white rats, which had acquired a habit of dying 
and making the place smell, “and Mrs. Clarence 
having, like myself, a very sensitive nose — all the 
Clarences have sensitive noses — we had to get rid of 
them. Even the white mice are a bit whiffy at times." 

The white mice were “whiffy." 

The subject of noses having been introduced by Mr. 
Clarence as he lit another cigarette from a lizard-skin 
case mounted in gold, at the end of the old one which 
was beginning to sizzle his moustache, and pointing 
with the match to his own Wellingtonian member, pro- 
ceeded to enter into minute details about his family, 
which it seemed had some relation to the original 
Clarences, with a strain of Irish and kingly blood. For 
all corroboration he pointed to his own nose, which, 
high pale organ that it was, certainly looked the part ; 
and once he indicated that of “Big Reggie," remark- 
ing that “there was blood there," which there certainly 
was. I began to confide in him something of the 
origin of the Tempests, trotting out some of my own 
ancestors to his extreme gratification, but pulled up 
warily as I noticed his growing curiosity to know 
something about my reason for coming to London. 
“Keep your mouth shut and your ears open" stood be- 
fore me, for in London I had already found the dis- 
advantage of confidences. 

Once started, Mr. Clarence, like some other things, 
was exceedingly difficult to stop, had I any desire to 


172 


PASSION 


do so, which I had not, and as Mrs. Clarence went 
out of the room '‘to do up her back hair” — a frequent 
process with her as I found later — I gathered cloudily 
that Mr. Considine Clarence had at some remote 
period undergone training for a veterinary surgeon, 
though as to whether he had ever really worked at 
his profession was not quite clear — that now his prin- 
cipal business was white mice, window-gardening, and 
an irregular un-professional connection amongst the 
cats, dogs, and canaries of the neighbourhood, which 
had grown up originally out of the kindness of his 
heart and his uncompleted course as a “vet.” and had 
developed into a sort of semi-professional affair for 
which he was sometimes paid and more often not. 
The last was extremely uncertain, and in his own 
words he “didn’t care tuppence whether they came to 
him or not,” for he had come unexpectedly into a 
snug little half -competence from a deceased aunt. He 
had been asked to join a friend in a shop for selling 
birds, and white mice, and other zoological sundries, 
but, as he said to me between the vast expulsions of 
smoke from his lungs, “he was a professional man — 
not a tradesman.” 

Mrs. Clarence coming back, Mr. Clarence mur- 
mured “Music?” Miss Selina Quest, for the first time 
breaking from her silence, murmured after him in the 
ghost of an echo: “Music?” Naturally I said I should 
be delighted. Mrs. Clarence slightly pursed her lips 
I thought, but went dutifully over to the piano. 

Mr. Clarence, despite my entirely justified denials, 
said he was sure I had a voice. Miss Cattie Quest 
said she was sure I had a voice. Mrs. Clarence said 
nothing. But it was with a certain air of satisfaction 
that Mr. Clarence went over to the piano and cleared 


SOCIETY 


173 


his throat, even letting his cigarette dangle negligently 
between his fingers as his wife played the opening bars 
of Tosti’s 'Tor Ever and For Ever” upon the piano, 
which, like everything else there, had seen better days. 

Mr. Clarence sang this in a doubtful tenor, high 
and throaty, but with real feeling too; so much so that 
I, in my corner, felt my eyes filling with tears; for I 
was always very susceptible to music and save for a 
stray piano-organ and once or twice a band in the 
Park I had heard no music in the years I had been in 
London. * 

The singer once started had no intention of stopping. 
“Beauty’s Eyes” and “Good-bye” with two or three 
others followed the first, finishing up with a drinking 
song in which the words “wine, woman and song” 
came in rather too often and were sung with rather 
too much sugar for my artistic sense — and, I thought, 
for Mrs. Clarence’s. For Mr. Clarence’s eyes sparkled, 
his moustache took a fiercer twirl, and his fine set of 
false teeth gleamed whitely as he sang the last lines: 

“Whether my life be short or long, 

I’ll die as I’ve lived — with wine, woman and song!” 

It was with a very little voice that Mrs. Clarence, 
her grey eyes lighting up, asked whether we would 
sing a hymn, and I gathered then, or later, there were 
certain theological differences between Mr. and Mrs. 
Clarence, she being a member of “the Inner Friends” 
and Mr. Clarence being a member of nothing in par- 
ticular. 

It seemed they often had a hymn together in the 
evenings. And so we sang “Jesu Lover of my Soul,” 
the children’s voices blending with the others, even 


174 


PASSION 


the second last — the last was still at the breast — 
Master Randolph, giving full lung to it, whilst Big 
Reggie, his great nose on one side, sang also with 
intense fervour. The Misses Quest, about whose posi- 
tion in the family I was not quite clear, but whom in 
some way or other I discovered were Londoners born, 
thawed I noticed during the hymn and sang lusciously 
though composedly enough. I could not help admir- 
„ ing the blue sleepy eyes and the classical Greek profiles 
of the sisters, their low foreheads, with the fair hair 
done low on the neck, for I had a weakness for the 
Greeks and that way of doing the hair. 

Alike as they were, there was however some inde- 
finable difference between them. One, Miss Cattie, 
whom Mr. Clarence called “Puss,” but who called him 
“Mr.” Considine, was an inch or two shorter than 
her sister and the eyes were set differently. It was 
when I began to compare them that I noticed, or 
rather “felt” something strained, almost antagonistic, 
between them. They watched each other in a furtive, 
cat-like way with those sleepy eyes as they clung each 
to Mrs. Clarence; and, though I could not be sure, I 
felt also that Mrs. Clarence was watching them, even 
though she took their demonstration of affection plac- 
idly enough. But all this passed as the hymn gathered 
volume: 

I was much affected, especially when we sang: 

“While the nearer waters roll, 

While the tempest still is nigh.” 

for I was afraid and helpless and it brought back the 
days in Ireland when I had laid myself to rest in the 
arms of my Friend; though the lines got tangled up 


SOCIETY 


175 


somehow with the trustful, slightly closed eyes of the 
sisters — those eyes which as they sang so shyly avoided 
looking at you. 

The children, except Master Randolph, who sted- 
fastly refused, having been put to bed in some un- 
known quarter — there certainly seemed no room in the 
ground floor back for seven children with their father 
and mother, even though there was no servant — the 
conversation became general. One must also except 
Miss Selina Quest, who was sleepy and silent as ever, 
as she sat on the sofa watching out at Mr. Clarence 
as he did up a lock of hair which had dropped upon 
the fair neck of Miss Cattie, whilst Mrs. Clarence bent 
low over the music in the corner as she put it away. 

Big Reggie obliged with a racy description of a 
Derby to which, before he took to the drink, he had 
driven his own coach and four twenty years ago ; Mr. 
Clarence, who had finished Miss Cattie's toilette, ex- 
plaining how the Clarence family had come down to 
a ground floor back and a day slavey in Fear Street. 
Even I forgot the Cave and under the Clarence in- 
fluence thawed out after my three years' isolation, 
saying rather more than I afterwards cared to re- 
member. 

It seemed there was to be bread, cheese and pickles 
for supper — “just a snack, Mr. Tempest, you know," 
said Mr. Clarence awkwardly, but seeing a look of 
doubt on his wife's face and it being by now 1 o'clock 
in the morning, I refused and said good-night, Clar- 
ence insisting upon “seeing me home" as he put it. 

As we passed up the stairs, we met an old lady with 
white curls, in a poke bonnet, the broad velvet ribbons 
of which were tied under her ear. She had a hooked 
nose and the most curious pair of brown-green eyes I 


176 


PASSION 


had ever seen — eyes with lights in them like some 
kind of precious stone. 

She was coming out of Miss Ella's room, from 
which the light streamed upon her, and I thought I 
heard Miss Ella say “Never — never!” and shut the 
door sharply — but that I believed was imagination, 
for the old lady turned smilingly towards us under the 
single gas-jet which quavered there. She looked so 
good and sweet that I said “Good-night !” impulsively, 
which she returned with a bow and a nod of the curls. 
There was a scent in the passage, that brought back 
that scent of white moths. 


XVIII 


THE OLD LADY OF THE CURLS 

Except the Clarences, with whom I spent an occa- 
sional evening, and Miss Ella, I knew not a soul in 
London, for in the City nobody knew anybody after 
he passed down the steps of Golgotha House at the end 
of the day. 

Although when she met me on the stairs, she would 
sometimes ask me to come and have a cup of tea with 
her and "a Rabbit’’ — she made delectable Welsh rare- 
bits — I cannot say I found my early shyness of Miss 
Ella wearing off. There was something almost re- 
spectful in her way of treating me: I think she had 
vague ideas that I was “a gentleman,” and I never 
felt at home with her. She often spoke of “gentle- 
men” and “ladies” as beings apart. 

She had curious callers — occasionally highly- 
dressed lady friends who seemed to be in excellent 
situations, and, more seldom, gentlemen, also well- 
dressed as a rule. But these latter were rare, though 
I sometimes thought I heard men’s voices across the 
landing, but put it down to imagination. She said 
that sometimes a gentleman friend saw her home from 
the theatre, and one night I heard a girl’s scream and 
some oaths — but oaths were common in Fear Street 
and I would have thought nothing about it but that 
Miss Ella had a swollen face the next morning. She 
177 


178 


PASSION 


said she had knocked it on the mantelpiece. She kept 
curious hours and I often saw the lights behind the 
red blinds as I came back in the early hours of the 
morning from my night walks. 

I had grown more accustomed to her little boy and 
sometimes he would bandy his way across the floor 
and lay those dreadful hands of his on my knee whilst 
he babbled something. His mother was devoted to 
him in a painful, haunting way and he always shared 
our Welsh rarebit or the four penny-half penny Ma- 
deiras which I sometimes brought as a little contribu- 
tion to the supper table, but I cannot say that he 
didn’t take away my appetite or that I ever got quite 
used to him. 

We had certain understandings. When a very 
rare “gentleman friend” — she always called them that 
— arrived, it was understood I was to take my leave, 
and also on some nights, the nights she called her 
theatre nights, it was understood I had to go in order 
that she might “get herself up.” I once saw her 
through the curtains doing something delicately to 
her eyebrows; but she was always pale. When she 
went out, she left little Victor — his full name was 
Albert Victor she told me pridefully — alone, and I 
often heard him wailing for his Mum — a queer cry, 
not unlike a whimper. 

It was in one of those evenings at Miss Ella’s in 
the winter, that I met again the old lady of the curls. 
I had stepped across the passage to lend her a book, 
Samuel Laing’s “Human Origins” I remember it was, 
for she had expressed a vague wish “to improve her- 
self,” and I with the propaganda spirit strong within 
me had I suppose not only the idea to improve Miss 
Ella, but the whole world. I knocked, and not hear- 


THE OLD LADY OF THE CURLS 179 


in g a reply ventured to open the door, and was 
abashed to find myself face to face with the old lady 
in the poke bonnet, who stood near the window, the 
picture of a Dresden china doll, in her high-boned, 
corseted figure and flowered silk skirts, voluminous, 
crinolined, which she smoothed with two tiny wrinkled 
hands, the emeralds upon which struck lights from the 
chandelier and from those queer reddish-green eyes 
which smiled at me in kindly recognition. 

There was that scent of white moths in the room. 

Before Miss Ella, who seemed ill at ease, could 
introduce us, she had dropped me a succession of the 
quaintest little curtseys, marionette-like, the eyes and 
the delicately hooked nose peering out at me from 
under the poke bonnet and the white curls shaking, 
whilst there came into her cheeks, delicate as a with- 
ered rose leaf, a faint pink flush. 

“This gentleman and I have met before,” she said 
in a curiously rich contralto, with a little quaver in 
the heart of it as in a harp string when it is over- 
strained. 

I summoned up my best bow to do honour to the 
old-fashioned politeness of the little lady, who had 
fairly won my heart with her smile, whilst Miss Ella, 
bewildered, murmured as she gazed from one to the 
other : 

“You know Mr. Tempest . . . you know Madame 
Angelica . . . but, of course, Madame Angelica 
knows everybody. . . .” 

“That is my profession,” put in the old lady with 
another nod and smile. “If you want to make the 
world beautiful, you must know the world.” Her 
English was exquisitely pure, with a ring in the “r” 
as she said “world,” that vibrated to the ear. 


180 


PASSION 


“You know, I am a creator of beauty, Mr. Tem- 
pest” — she used my name as though we had been old 
friends. “I adore the beautiful. I live for beauty 
in this grimy un-beautiful London of ours. And I 
remember you because, if you will let a woman old 
enough to be your grandmother say so, you are beau- 
tiful.” 

She said it so simply and frankly that the resent- 
ment and suspicion I would have felt at what other- 
wise would have been gross flattery, vanished, and 
instead there remained a glow of satisfaction. 

“Don’t say that ! . . .” broke in Miss Ella sharp- 
ly, almost roughly, and then pulled up as though 
ashamed. 

“And why should I not say it?” insisted the old 
lady sweetly, after flashing her eyes greenly for a 
moment at the interrupter. “You know you think it, 
and everything takes place in thought, whether of vice 
or virtue. I only say what you think and to think a 
thing is the same as to say it, or for that matter, to 
do it. It is only the thought that makes all things 
right or wrong, as your Shakespeare puts it.” 

Then Madame Angelica was not English, as despite 
her name I had believed from the purity of her speech. 
I was yet to find that no one knew Madame An- 
gelica’s real nationality. She might have been Teuton 
or Latin, for she spoke all tongues with equal fluency. 

“And it is natural you should think it,” she went on 
smoothly and unbrokenly, “for beauty turns to beauty 
as the flower turns to the sun — and you, though your 
beauty is not the beauty of Mr. Tempest — for the 
Irish race have their own peculiar beauty — still you 
have a beauty of your own, my child. Look at the 
beauty of that dark waterfall of hair you took down 


THE OLD LADY OF THE CURLS 181 


for me the other day, for which many of my clients 
would give their eyes. For you know, my dear, your 
hair is irritating and suggestive, and that is the highest 
compliment I can pay to any woman’s hair. ... You 
need not look so startled. . . .” 

For Miss Ella, her lips parted, was staring at her 
in fascination, but with something else in her look I 
could not fathom. 

“You know,” she went on, “I could take the world 
in the net of a woman’s hair, a net spun of golden 
meshes, or of the red-tawn of a Titian.” — She made a 
drawing movement in her silken lap with those terrible 
little hands with the pointed nails and indigo veins. — 
“Miss Ella there, she doesn’t know the power that 
lies in her tresses, and if she did, she wouldn’t know 
how to use it.” She laughed, with, I thought, a tinge 
of irony in the laugh. “They talk about the power of 
gold — there is more strength and cunning in a hair of 
gold than in all the golden sovereigns ever minted for 
the Bank of England. . . 

And then this extraordinary old woman had turned 
to me: 

“Your Mr. Mandrill talks about the power of 
money — oh, yes,” as she noted the look of amazement 
in my eyes — “I know all about the Cave, Mr. Tempest 
— but I could spin a web from a hair of gold that 
would shut the mouth of the Cave and fetter its 
master inside. 

“Money !” she went on, her words flowing smooth- 
ly and irresistibly, “Money ! Give me beauty, physical 
beauty, temperamental beauty, and I’ll match it 
against the golden hoards of the world. When a 
woman has beauty, she has the world in her hands 
to do what she likes with. They all come to the small 


182 


PASSION 


white hands of the woman — they are all caught in her 
hair: Napoleon and his conqueror Wellington — Nel- 
son and the Caesars — Samson and Mark Antony — 
your modern plutocrat as the autocrat of all the 
ages. . . 

“But not Mandrill: he has only one passion in life, 
the money-passion,” I put in shyly, for Mandrill’s sin- 
gle-minded devotion to his wife and hard, clean life, 
were notorious ; my pugnacity and something else that 
stirred deeply in me underneath impelling me to the 
interruption, as a stone juts from a river-bed, check- 
ing the flow for a moment. 

But only for a moment, for in the next this tor- 
rential little woman had flowed on and over me: 

“Mandrill . . . passion . . . money. But I tell 
you that she who has beauty has money too” — the 
eyes had set hard like a basilisk. “There is money in 
beauty, Mr. Tempest, whether in man or woman, if 
the possessor knows how to use the power of it. 
Mandrill with his coups makes his millions, it is true, 
but he loses them, too, and they mean hours and 
months and years of brain-racking, heart-breaking, 
work. There is an easier way if he only knew it, for 
there is money in beauty, but he” — she shrugged her 
shoulders thinly through the silk of her dress — “he is 
as ugly as an ape — as powerful and as unable to use 
his power — though even his ugliness has a beauty of 
its own and could be turned into money. . . . 

“I — I create beauty — and in creating beauty I create 
power — money. Women come to me — yes, the wives 
of your Mandrills — for the beauty secret which shall 
help them to hold their husbands, the men of gold and 
power, in their toils.” She spoke quietly, assuredly, 
smilingly, but with a tensity and a clutching movement 


THE OLD LADY OF THE CURLS 183 


of those terrible jewelled fingers on her lap as she sat 
there. “They come to me, and through them and the 
secret of beauty I hold their husbands and their 
money. Give me the beauty of the world and I will 
rule the world, for the beauty of the world, what 
men call love, is its passion — its driving-power. Give 
me . . 

She had stopped abruptly as she caught sight of 
Miss Ella sitting there staring — staring, her eyes 
open, her ears open, her lips open. She laughed, a 
laugh with a contralto glug-glug in it, which then 
rippled out. 

“Why, Mr. Tempest, if you wished, I could show 
you with your beauty how to get money and power 
— yes, and the beauty too that lies in a golden hair.” 
She looked at me a moment. . But there is 

danger in that. . . .” She went on as though rumi- 
nating: “I once knew a boy, a beautiful boy too, who 
after his first entanglement in that beauty, killed him- 
self — yes, he actually jumped out of the third floor 
window — he was frightened or horror-stricken or 
something. . . She said it in a way that was pity- 
ing but that, had I not seen her face, I should have 
thought held something sly and gloating in it. 

She went on rapidly, smiling again: “Miss Ella 
shall bring you some day to my house in Dragon 
Square when I will show you the way of these things.” 

“No, I won’t, and that’s flat!” put in Miss Ella 
rudely. It made me feel ashamed. 

“Oh, yes, you will,” went on the smiling Madame 
Angelica, “you know you always do what I ask in 
the end.” She fixed her again with her eyes — then 
persuasively: “Now you know you do. You are al- 
ways a fool to your own interests. I have often said, 


184 


PASSION 


Mr. Tempest, that if Miss Ella would only put herself 
under my care, I could give her a husband of her 
own in no time — for I confess I am an inveterate 
matchmaker — make her a lady with her own carriage 
and horses, her own servants, and a new dress for 
every day in the year/’ She laughed. “You must 
persuade her — for she will come to me in the end. I 
know it. She knows it.” She broke off : . But 

now you must really get me a cup of tea, my child, I 
am dreadfully thirsty.” 

She laughed musically, but there was something 
sure, something almost terrible in this Dresden china 
old lady, who spun her web of love and money, of 
beauty and passion, something deathly-sure . . . and 
there were always those blue-veined hands, with the 
long hooking nails that squirmed in her lap like tor- 
tured snakes. 

As we sipped our tea, for which Madame Angelica 
produced some wonderful Viennese pastries from a 
little square silver box, she launched out into a range 
of subjects which left me breathless. She had been 
everywhere, knew everybody — spoke about the aris- 
tocracy and the plutocracy of two continents with 
unerring certainty ; made me laugh at her stories ; and 
for me, at least, and I think for Miss Ella, opened up 
a new world. 

She had taken me in the net of her curls and her 
friendly understanding. It was as though we had 
been speaking a couple of hours, when at two in the 
morning we heard the sound of horses in Fear Street, 
when she got up, refusing to let me show her down 
the stairs, and as I looked out of the window I saw 
below a brougham and a pair of superb black horses 
with two befurred men on the box, into which a 


THE OLD LADY OF THE CURLS 185 


shadow passed.' I followed the carriage as it drove 
rapidly away, when I heard a movement behind me, 
and, turning, saw Miss Ella, her face drawn and 
pallid, as she stamped her foot. . . . 

“I hate her — I hate her!” she said. “I hate her — 
I hate her !” 

Her hands clenched themselves — her eyes were 
afire. 

”1 hate her — I hate her ! . . 


XIX 


DAMP EARTH AND MOONLIGHT 

In the early days, or nights, of Fear Street I never 
went out — I was afraid, or was it lethargic? that 
lethargy of London which weaves itself around, set- 
tles down upon the lonely man. I had only one friend, 
myself, and so I held my own companionship. The 
evenings I spent in my bed, reading, having joined the 
Bishopsgate Institute library, which was free, and so 
saved money for fuel. 

My supper was the event of the day for me, and 
even if it meant sparing a bit on the breakfast, I 
usually managed to have some little relish in the eve- 
nings, which I ate with my book propped up before 
me. Sometimes it was a tin of bloater paste, to which 
I was very partial ; sometimes a little pig’s fry bought 
cheap on a Saturday night from Mr. Bluddon out of 
one of his scrap boxes exposed with the figures “3^2 , ” 
“4,” “5,” or “7” as the case might be, set over them 
in polished brass, being the price per lb. For I had 
bought a little frying pan, and after a few experiments 
over the gas stove in the entry, in which as I have said 
I had a share for 3d. a week, I managed to turn out 
a very passable fry indeed. My usual supper was 
one of red herrings, long thin red fellows, firing to 
the eye and the taste, a sort of Dead Sea fruit, for 
the fry was apt to lead me into the extravagance of 
raw apples and this put up the cost of the relish for 
186 


DAMP EARTH AND MOONLIGHT 187 


which I allowed 2/^d. at the outside. Hearing that 
potatoes were cheap and, as I knew, wholesome, I had 
invested in a little saucepan, but what with the gas 
they consumed which ran me over my 3d. a week and 
the fact that I had got out of the way of eating vege- 
tables, they were not a success. I kept coming back to 
them however in the way that I had — I was a terribly 
persistent fellow — because my growing pallor and the 
physiology I had absorbed from the “Boy’s Own Pa- 
per” made me do so. (There was a doctor in that 
paper who was the tyrant of my existence.) But even 
at seventeen, with a pound a week, I was generally 
undernourished and hungry. 

And so my life swung pendulum-like between Fear 
Street and the City — the City and Fear Street. That 
was the via dolorosa of which I knew each kerb and 
shop-frontr-of other streets I knew nothing or next 
to nothing, for I shrank from the lights of the West 
End. Once from the Park I had caught sight of the 
great white facade of a house lying behind a maze of 
wire and shrubs, which I heard a man say was Man- 
drill’s, a house that rose above the thicket about it to 
stare its peers on either side out of countenance — one 
the dwelling of a baronet, and the other of a South 
African diamond king, as my informant, who was 
one of those shabby-genteels, frock-coated and bowl- 
er-hatted, one meets in Hyde Park, informed me. 
And once I had seen a queer little figure sitting bolt 
upright against a flowered cushion, holding a tiny 
flowered parasol over the poke bonnet and white curls 
in a close white-gloved hand. It looked a marionette 
as it nodded in the Victoria behind the two great black 
horses with the irreproachable coachman and foot- 
man, nosegayed, on the box. 


188 


PASSION 


But except for an odd glimpse of Park Lane and 
the people in the Row, I knew nothing of this London 
in which I was engulfed. Even my first summer holi- 
days I spent lounging in the Park. I had nowhere to 
g°- 

But though I shrank from the lights of London, 
they were always there — beckoning and glancing and 
dancing like that other thing of the long ago. And 
so I began to walk in the streets near by. In the 
earlier days, after I had cooked and eaten my supper, 
I would wander timorously along the Tottenham 
Court Road into the Euston Road, which with its long 
lines of high grey houses, deserted cat-haunted gar- 
dens, and the adventure which stalked at midnight on 
its pavements, had a strange attraction for me. 

When I passed out under the fanlight of the Fear 
Street house on a winter's night, it seemed to me that 
all the adventure of the world lay outside in the yellow 
fog. I don’t know what I really expected to find in 
the Arabian Nights of the Euston Road, but in that 
road of magic all things seemed possible. The shapes 
that passed me in the fog — those giant looming shad- 
ows that came out of the arc lights — might have been 
the genii of the Tales; the girls who walked under the 
enchantments of the Endsleigh Gardens might have 
been the houris of Paradise. I looked in their faces 
shyly, expecting in each one to see the Princess of the 
story. The eyes that shone so glassy under the lights 
were the bright-eyed radiance of the princesses — the 
rouge on their cheeks the glow of health and virtue — 
the scents tangled in their clothes the scents of the 
Heavenly City. 

The bells that chimed from the church towers, as 
the shriek of the locomotives in the termini, were to 


DAMP EARTH AND MOONLIGHT 189 


me the bells of fairyland and the tortures of the lost 
souls. And the ghouls of enchantment were not want- 
ing as the small hours wound their insistent clammy 
fingers about me and the Road became littered with 
those grotesque shapes of disease that dragged them- 
selves out of the surrounding maze — those unfor- 
tunates, who shunning the light of day, only show 
themselves between midnight and the sunrise that 
drives them back to their earths in the back blocks. 

Amongst these I made my friends. I did not speak 
to them, nor they to me, but we understood one an- 
other — we were all of us outcast, each in his own way 
— creatures of another world — an underworld. 

From them all there stands up slender and bronze 
the presiding genius of the place — the mulatto who 
kept the coffee stall at the end of the road near the 
King’s Cross Terminus — the creature who, outside the 
house in Fear Street, was the first to say a kind word 
to me. * 

I can see him now — tall and soft-looking with the 
great gold earrings: with eyes that gazed out fawn- 
like, unseeing — gentle, beautiful Aaron Naptha; who 
had been the best middle-weight in England before 
he lost his sight through a blow. I can hear again 
the melody of his voice as he served, unerring, his 
coffee and sardines underneath the golden oil lights 
of his stall — hear him as he said: “I had to take to 
the coffee trade — we all have to live.” Again I am 
wedging myself in the corner, munching a “doorstep” 
and sipping the bright earthy coffee mixture, listening 
to the stories of the cab-touts and “rough-house” men ; 
or watching wonderingly a belated swell who follow- 
ing the skirts of adventure had lost his way and 
gained an appetite as he wolfed down his coffee and 


190 


PASSION 


bread and butter with an air of recklessness. Or I 
would see the poor girls, the girls with the paint and 
patchouli of the Euston Road, creep out of the fog 
to the lighthouse of the stall — and watch the mulatto 
trust them for a pint of coffee and a “doorstep” when 
they were as they said “unlucky in love” — for we all 
have to live. For now I knew something of these 
girls, and they made me wonder and sorry — with 
sometimes something else behind it, neither wonder 
nor sorrow. 

Or I would walk before the fronts of the high bare 
houses asking the story of each and sensing adventure 
everywhere. 

Here was a house with two red blinds, the house 
at which I always looked, reading each night a new 
story on the shadowgraph of its blinds — the blinds 
across which the shadows were always flitting. A 
woman with her hair knotting about her . , . a man 
with a pointed curling beard . . . once a woman’s 
profile held back drinking, the arms upraised. What 
was the house? Who lived there? Who were the 
women? And what was going on behind all those 
other lighted, shaded windows? 

Here was a little stationer’s, under the corner of 
whose torn blind I always looked as I passed. There 
was always a little old man there in an ancient flowered 
dressing-gown — a little old man with a hooking nose 
who sat with some sort of ivory checkers before him, 
setting them in little piles before him — ever and anon 
looking over his shoulder smiling as though he waited 
for someone; smiling with his toothless gaped mouth; 
smiling weakly and expectantly. 

Who was the visitor for whom he waited? Why 
did he not come ? Why did he always sit there at the 


DAMP EARTH AND MOONLIGHT 191 


same time between 1 and 2 in the morning? And 
once I had seen a tall dark fierce-looking girl with a 
scar from eye to lip-corner shining livid under the 
lamplight who stood behind him in the doorway look- 
ing down at him scornfully as he played his intermi- 
nable game — but as I looked back again to her she had 
vanished. Who was she? 

And there was a man in a shovel-hat who always 
came out to take the air at exactly the same time every 
night at the Tottenham Court Road end — and two 
horrid old women, toothless, who walked up and down 
and leered for some inscrutable purpose upon the old 
men as they passed whilst they worked the cavities of 
their mouths as though they would say something. 
What was their message? 

Sometimes there were other things — the girl who 
sat naked in the fog, smiling under the rime of the 
February night — telling her story, incoherent, in a 
broad Yorkshire which sounded inexpressibly shock- 
ing there. What was her story? 

I wanted an answer to these things. I wanted to 
know the meaning of it all. These things, like the 
Cave, like London, were unintelligible. Here were 
two women, middle-aged steady looking women, with 
the steady respectable look of the middle-aged woman 
who walks in the Euston Road in the small hours. 
The sparse ostrich feathers on the hat of one — the 
angular one — bobbed confidentially down over those 
of the short fat motherly woman at her side, as they 
came down the pavement where the stone horse-trough 
stands. They were not drunk. They were sober 
women earning their nightly bread — no loghts-o’-love 
these. 

And then without a sound the fat fair blousy woman 


192 


PASSION 


had swung her paw upwards, hooked it in the plumes 
and hair of the other and was clawing at her like a 
flabby cat. The other screaming and clinching — then 
checking and gripping in silence under the white of 
the moon. 

The street had been empty the moment before ; but 
shapes were materialising — twisted, broken, flaunting 
shapes, silent, which stared at the two bobbing shad- 
ows as they danced a sort of carmagnole on the pave- 
ment. The pale skinny woman had ceased screaming 
and had locked one claw in the fat woman’s hair 
whilst she struck upwards into the dress folds over 
the bulbous stomach of her opponent — at every hook 
grunting, high, concentrated — “Leo! Leo!” Some- 
thing trickled down the short woman’s face in a net- 
work of thin black lines — and then they were over on 
the ground whilst the shadows about them drew in 
silently, the thin fury still grunting hoarsely, evenly, as 
she struck: “Leo! Leo! Leo!” and the other whimper- 
ing from somewhere underneath like a mouse taken by 
a cat. And then they were silent again, the fat fair 
woman always clawing, the other striking upwards. 
I could see the ridiculous thin legs sticking out of the 
tub of a body as the other tore her lower garments 
away from her, and the poor broken stockings, one 
down, which showed themselves. 

And one of the shadows said “Copper!” hoarsely. 
The shadows had vanished. The thin woman clutch- 
ing the remnants of her hat to her bloody head was 
scuttering down the street and the other lay there on 
her back — a dark patch spreading itself through the 
thinness of the chemise. I looked at her stupidly — 
and then fled like the others — meanly, ignobly, stop- 


DAMP EARTH AND MOONLIGHT 193 


ping under the shadow of the church to be sick — 
deadly, deathly sick. 

But I asked myself in the days that followed — who 
was “Leo?” Who was “Leo?” 

These were the things that poured in on me in my 
home in the streets — the things into which I built 
myself until I was part of them. These were the 
questions I wanted to answer. And it was here in the 
Euston Road that I first got the desire to set down 
my answers to those questions of the London streets — 
to record something — to write something. 

But my feet grew more daring as the spring came 
on and I felt the call of London in May, the call of 
something in the blood ; and so it was that one beauti- 
ful night, with a London May moon hanging golden 
over the white Regent Street curve, jewelled by its 
electric girdle, that I found myself moving in another 
London — something other than the Euston Road. 

I was afraid, but I was afraid also to go back, for 
this girdle of lights drew me as the candle draws the 
moth. And there I was, living and moving amongst 
the goddesses — amongst the odours of Paradise. But 
even here there was that scent of white moths and 
another scent that blended strangely with it, the scent 
of the horse dung. 

This was something other than the Euston Road, 
something to me as ineffable as it was hidden. For 
I was entirely innocent. I knew nothing. I had no 
friends and I shrank from the lewdness of the Cave, 
and had always vaguely before me Smeeter, now a 
very junior clerk, who had grown like a tallow gutter- 
ing candle and was falling over. 

For the first time in my life I saw beautiful London 
ladies walking under the May moon speaking a won- 


194 


PASSION 


derful collection of languages — and French, the lan- 
guage of politeness and love. I gasped and admired. 
They swung backwards and forwards like the flesh- 
eaters at the Zoo — others stood in long rows preening 
or smiling or contemptuous. Those women were to 
me something etheric. I built in their hair my nest 
of romance, saw in their painted eyes the glance of 
love — in their gait the freedom of the sex. Their 
clothes were to me the clothes of fashion and virtue. 
I gasped, gaped, again. There came that little catch 
in the throat, that dry crackling of the lips. Each 
woman I saw I fell in love with — each was a new 
revelation of womanhood. 

But under it all was the desire to love and be loved. 
There were times, these times, when this desire rose 
in me pulsating, dominating — overwhelming even that 
other desire which ran darkly underneath it. My 
loneliness took me as in a pall. I felt that though 
these women were unapproachable — I mean that they 
stood so high above me — I wished to throw myself 
upon their breasts — as a child might go to his mother, 
but that there was something else too — something un- 
easy, insatiable — and so I passed in the eternal gamut 
to the thing which perhaps underlay the whole. What 
was the thing? 

But I feared them too, and when one of them — 
she was a tall, full-bosomed girl with a sweeping 
fashionable hat and was dressed in elephant grey vel- 
vet (I have always liked it since) — came by I pulled 
up stock still and stared at her. And she was beauti- 
ful. 

She smiled a little at me, and even to-day I know 
it was not the stereotyped smile of Piccadilly — when 
someone had wrenched me round and a voice I knew 


DAMP EARTH AND MOONLIGHT 195 


and yet didn’t was screaming at me, low: “You come 
along o’ me — You come along o’ me — wot are you 
doing here?” 

It was Miss Ella — not the Miss Ella I knew, but a 
venomous spitfire. And she had broken out into 
something else — ugly, bitter words to the girl, who had 
stopped, amused: “You ’ussy — you — you — you French 
’ussy.” It was all she could say, but the other had 
said something low, dirty, which I didn’t understand, 
and had spat at her, turning flauntingly on her high 
heels, walking down the white flagstones as two big 
policemen came quartering the pavement towards us. 

But Miss Ella . . . Miss Ella . . . now I knew 
. . . when she went out in the evenings ... the 
men’s voices in the night. . . . 

But I didn’t think the worse of her for it — it . . . 
it was all natural and horrible ...” we all have to 
live . . .’’no, not that, but, yet, there was something 
in it too. 

She walked me home like a prisoner — I ashamed, 
though I could not say why; but when we got home 
she went out to buy a bit of cheese at the corner shop 
to make a “Rabbit,” and she did not speak about it 
again and dropped back to her old ordinary rather 
shy way. 

But that night: and that girl, especially that girl’s 
language, waked something in me! It crept on me 
like a seeping tide. It put something into me — like 
that uric acid girl, but different — and there was the 
tawny-haired girl in the window and my mother and 
damp earth and moonlight. It was all there. 


XX 


SQUID 

Miss Ella could not keep me from the streets ... 
because she could not keep me from London. London, 
that intestinal London I had sensed that December 
night I came from Sherlingham, had me in its maw 
and was digesting me at its leisure. The feverish 
struggles of the early days to get clear of the brute, 
the sullen hate I had felt, were gradually yielding to 
the anaesthesia of its internal organs. The soft steami- 
ness of the place with its yeasty ferment was doing 
its work on me. I found a dismal inbrooding pleasure 
in my night prowls amongst the gutters of the thing. 
My loneliness grew dear to me. I was losing myself 
in the cold fogs of the Euston Road — in the dark 
corridors and yellow lights of Fear Street. I was 
being digested. 

But the night in Piccadilly had been the Open 
Sesame to that other side of London. It was the con- 
crete realisation in a hard, diamantiferous way of the 
passion which had risen to flood inside me that day 
in the Royal Exchange. It was its reflex. That 
realisation went through me like an essence, intangi- 
ble, in a way, unrealisable — but always essential. 

Despite my shabbiness, I returned to the Regent 
Street curve very often. My favourite walk was 
from the top of Regent Street down the right-hand 
196 


SQUID 197 

pavement, round the big draper’s at the corner of the 
Circus, and so into Piccadilly proper as far as the 
Duke of Devonshire’s house at the corner of Berkeley 
Street, and then back the other side and up the other 
pavement of Regent Street. 

I looked at the sleek well-washed men in evening 
dress, admired them for their hard, physical fitness 
and hated them . . . for that and everything. I 
watched their women, hugeous, soft, bejewelled crea- 
tures — admired and hated them, despairingly. I hated 
the rubber tires on their Victorias — the tops and 
cockades of their coachmen; bathed myself in and 
nauseated in the smells of their restaurants — and 
looked malevolently but longingly at the soft golden 
facades of the theatres. For this was power — money 
— passion. 

Those women, downed and laced and filmed, loved 
and were beloved. But they loved the men with the 
money — the men of power — that was the condition. 
In my growing democracy I thought them ridiculous, 
but I yearned for them — collectively; lecherously 
abashed ! but a lechery that had something in it of the 
beautiful, of virtue. There was not one of them that 
did not look ridiculous by the side of Mrs. S. — yes, 
even of Miss Ella. I despised them — but I lusted to 
walk by their side, talk to them in my own dress- 
clothes — drive with them behind my own horses to 
their theatres, their restaurants, their houses . . . and 
then sickened at the thought of the whole thing I had 
conjured. 

One evening when I had bought one of Dunn’s 3s. 
9d. bowler hats out of my savings and felt a little 
more confident in myself, I ventured to stare through 
the doors of Princes’, before which stood a brougham 


198 


PASSION 


with a pair of smashing chestnuts. A very splendid 
woman in white was standing in the corridor, a 
woman different from those others, with a smoothly 
curved neck, the full dropping bosoms of the woman 
who has suckled, and eyes that were not like a cat’s — 
like those others. There was a stir behind the glass. 
A Gorgon of a man who might have escaped from a 
giant’s caravan came through the doors holding one 
of them open. Another gold-laced Gorgon followed, 
holding the other door. A footman jumped down 
from the brougham and snapped the door back smartly 
— and there walking in the centre of the crimson 
carpet that ran out on to the pavement was Mandrill, 
resplendent in evening dress, the lady preceding him. 
He looked colossal under the electric lights — dominat- 
ing — combative. 

The Gorgons wilted. The footman’s lip lost its 
clean stiffness — the passers-by held up to stare. The 
door was shut and he was whirled away. A man in 
evening dress who was passing said under his breath: 
"Mandrill — the Copper Man,” and his companion, con- 
vinced: "... I believe you, my boy . . . Millions! 

. . . Millions! . . .” waving expansively. 

I gazed after the brougham. No — I didn’t want 
those other women, those soft feline creatures, with 
claws behind the velvet. But I did want those Gorgon 
brutes at my feet — I wanted the cat- women under my 
heel — I wanted to wear nice clothes and to eat nice 
things. I wanted money — power — yes, and a mate like 
that woman by Mandrill’s side. A good woman, but 
a woman with a curving neck and soft chaste bosoms. 
Like Mandrill, I had the Big Idea. 

There was a soft little chuckle under my ear. . . . 
"Poor boy . . . wouldn’t you like to be Mandrill! 


SQUID 199 

Come to me at Dragon Square . . . I’ll show you the 
way as I promised. . . .” Another chuckle and the 
little old lady of the curls, magnificently gowned in 
her old-world way, with a mantilla of grey lace 
shrouding her like the cocoon shrouds the chrysalis, 
had passed into the discreet brougham with the black 
horses I had seen that night in Fear Street, shepherd- 
ing before her a slank girl, a child, demurely vicious, 
with a great golden-brown plait down her back, who 
looked or seemed to look scornfully at me and my 
clothes. 

“ Visit me at Dragon Square . . came to me 
faintly as the brougham rolled away, and a sparkling 
mittened hand was waved out of the window. 

Dragon Square . . . the way . . . the golden way. 
I liked the little old lady of the curls, or rather, she 
fascinated me, as though she had been a young woman. 
What was the way? Why shouldn’t I go to Dragon 
Square? And there was the half-scornful face of the 
girl ... I hated her. But I would show her. She 
also like those others should be at my feet. I would 
go to Dragon Square. The Cave was not fast enough 
for me. 

Not that I could grumble about my race in the Cave, 
where I was being beaten into Big Business. I was 
still innocent enough, God knows, even after another 
year of work there, but I was becoming increasingly 
difficult to "do.” Even Smeeter, upon whose face 
that whitey-green pallor seemed now to be settled per- 
manently, forebore to be humorous. The great black 
circles under and around his serio-comic eyes which 
at one time had made him so owlishly funny, were 
now making him something other. There was some- 
thing tragic about him. The eyes were dulling and 


200 


PASSION 


he seemed always tired. Swinger, of the transfer de- 
partment, a notorious practical joker, had also held 
up after I had almost driven his glazed cuff-collar 
through his head — one of my rare lapses into the 
physical. I was becoming hardly, harshly, suspicious 
under the blows of the Cave, but I had eaten up two 
of the men above me and was doing my work well — 
too well — I did not know how to work badly. 

Gradually I found myself isolated. I was a 
“grind ;” a fellow you couldn’t ask out to have a drink. 
It was Swinger I think who said I was a “pie;” by* 
which he meant I think pious. I suppose because I 
didn’t swear and drink. I know I steadfastly refused 
to take a hand at “Solo whist” and “chance my arm 
at a tanner a time,” in the words of Swinger, who 
at this time was a very cute bird indeed in his high 
glaze, striped ties, and knowledge of the world picked 
up in a foreshortened visit to Ostend at Easter, where 
he had had a flutter at the tables. 

He said nothing about his lady friends, at which I 
marvelled, for I had seen him late one night near the 
Cafe Royal in Regent Street handing a gorgeous com- 
panion into a hansom. But he said he was a “goer,” 
a regular goer, and informed me that I was “no sport,” 
in which the part of the office which knew me con- 
curred. 

What I did not tell them was that I, for all my 
savage aloofness and my dreams, sometimes longed 
to be the average. I wanted to wear striped cashmere 
trouserings like Swinger — wished I could draw my 
grey suedes on as he did at the close of the day — 
yearned for one of the BBB briars with the triangular 
mounts and the high polish. I was social — I wanted 
to go out for a snack with these men at lunch time, 


SQUID 201 

many of whom, even Swinger, I really liked at heart, 
and who I think did not dislike me, though they 
thought me “curious.” I wished I could talk off-hand 
about Mandrill as “the Copper Monkey” as did 
Swinger in his more elevated moments, call a salary 
a “screw,” Mr. Pipkin, “old Pip,” and refer to Mr. 
Crosbill as “The ’Oof-bird.” 

But these things I could not do, and these fits always 
ended in reaction to the Royal Exchange condition; 
in redoubled effort; in the determination to succeed, 
the desire for power . . . and pulsating through it all 
that other desire, lustful, unsatisfied, the lust to life 
and to love. 

I never could understand how Swinger, Smeeter 
and the others, who were not getting more than I, 
always managed to buy such good clothes, smoke as 
much as they liked, have tasty snacks and money to 
lose at cards. Some of them had been having a flutter 
in Westingtons on the rumors of a new reef, but even 
this was not a satisfactory explanation, and sometimes 
in these little incursions upon the Stock Exchange 
they lost, as I well knew. 

My eating up Castles and Clutterbuck and my re- 
sultant 30s. a week had made little impression upon 
my finances, which were sometimes in a desperate 
condition, though I supposed if I could hold on I 
would be all right, for Mandrill’s principle was to give 
big salaries to the men at the top, where, as he himself 
said, there was always room. I suppose I was grow- 
ing fast. Now at 18, I could almost look Mandrill 
square in the throat and my appetite was prodigious, 
though uncertain. Also to keep up to my new posi- 
tion I had had to renew my wardrobe, mostly on the 
instalment plan and at a better place than at the “Value 


202 


PASSION 


for Money, Limited.” However I had discovered a 
perfect treasure of an Irish Jew in the Lower Marsh, 
Lambeth, where I really got “a West End cut at East 
End prices,” as he was careful to assure me. 

Hawkling was no help to me. His Prospectus De- 
partment with the companies in it were going to the 
dogs, Smeeter said solemnly in the owlish way he 
now had. No bonus ever came in our direction when 
profits were divided. His companies were the rotten- 
est we had, it was true, but there had been “lack of 
influence,” somebody said, and there had been a cun- 
ning obstreperous Director, nominated by the share- 
holders on one of these groups, who was always 
making trouble and who unreasonably refused to pay 
more than £100 a year instead of the customary £500 
for Secretary and Offices. Hawkling was no match 
for the terrible Hookgorm. 

The Reverend Skinsole, reinforced by little Craggs 
and others of his flock, was also nibbling at him again 
over the Westington, which had somehow postponed 
production again, and I suppose all this with Man- 
drill's “eye,” took his attention from the Prospectus 
Department. Some of his statements had been un- 
satisfactory, behind time, and so on, and though I was 
doing part of his work as well as my own, I still had 
not enough grip upon the intricacies of the thing to 
save the situation, and Hawkling refused all my re- 
quests to look into the books. Perhaps he saw my big 
acquisitive mouth. And there had been Castles and 
Clutterbuck. 

He was more blown and blousy than ey/ais- His 
very hair was looking patchy, and the bald spot had 
become a tonsure. 

In the meantime, Mandrill was going on from 


SQUID 203 

strength to strength. He was eating up big and little 
alike. If he was breaking fortunes, however, it was 
only fair to say he was making them too. The little 
investors poured their blood into him, and his amal- 
gamations were the talk of London. He was a sort 
of amalgamating animal. 

This word “amalgamation” was always in the air. 
One heard it bellowed in the Den and put out con- 
fidently in a large full voice by Mandrill at the Grand 
Orient meetings, where it was murmured from share- 
holder to shareholder, upon whom it had a soporific 
effect, as had another word much in the air — “pool- 
ing.” One heard it out of the mouths of secretaries 
and departmental heads, and even the very pages, the 
babes and sucklings of Big Business, talked glibly 
about “amalgamating” and “pooling.” 

If a mine was sick — amalgamate it and make it 
strong. If a mine were going strong — amalgamate 
it with another strong fellow and make it stronger. 
Amalgamation was the universal salve and stimulant, 
Mandrill said, for amalgamation meant centralisation 
of control and reduced costs of administration, and 
nobody could deny that in reason — if he were a busi- 
ness man and not an amateur. 

That first business I had overheard in connection 
with Squid was a pooling of shares, into which I 
gathered from chance words we had tried to get Squid 
and some of his interests, but without success, though 
we had offered him a formidable inducement. Two 
of our big copper groups, themselves amalgamations 
of companies, the Rio Grande and the Copper Bottom, 
had entered into an agreement with the Copper Fi- 
nance, Limited, under which they agreed on behalf 
of their chief shareholders, who held the controlling 


204 


PASSION 


interest, to “pool” their shares — that is, not to sell 
them under a certain price — placing the pool under the 
control of the Copper Finance, the company that acted 
as a sort of mother to the others, shepherding them, 
“nursing the market,” and generally controlling the 
financial side; even advancing money to sick com- 
panies, “on terms.” 

The Copper Finance was a very select affair. In 
its books the bulk of its shares seemed to be held by 
Vogel, Morkstein, Nathan, and, to my astonishment, 
by Hawkling and one or two other Secretaries and 
Departmental Chiefs. Mandrill’s personal holding 
was quite modest, and yet somehow or other Mandrill 
and the Copper Finance seemed to be one. I once 
ventured timidly to ask Hawkling about the holding 
of shares by Mandrill’s employees, but he snapped me 
up in pretty quick time. “Keep your mouth shut!” 
was his comment, as he pointed back at the inscription 
on the wall. 

Yes, but I couldn’t help my ears, which were be- 
ginning to hear more and more and becoming mi- 
crophonous, and I gathered after a time that Hawkling 
and the other Secretaries in whose names the shares 
stood were “dummies,” holding the shares on behalf 
of other, secret, parties, who for some occult purpose 
did not wish their names to be made public. 

This first pooling business had apparently succeeded, 
for there were complaints in the “Financial Expert” of 
some shadowy beings behind the Stock Exchange who 
pulled the strings, sending the shares up and down at 
will and engulfing what one may call the little “float- 
ing” investors by the thousand as they rushed in to 
buy, bobbing up and down on the surface. But all 
this movement looked very good for the companies 


SQUID 205 

in the pool, and therefore for their shareholders, at 
least for those that sold out at a profit, most of the 
amalgamations having taken place because they had 
used up all their working capital in paying promoter’s 
profits, buying machinery, etc., and had been forced 
to join hands with the stronger companies — at a con- 
sideration, these companies even sometimes having 
money advanced to them by the Copper Finance for 
this purpose — also for a consideration, as I was dimly 
sensing in the documents that came through my de- 
partment. 

Something that was more puzzling to me was that 
all these amalgamations and reorganisations and pool- 
ings, like the prices of the shares on the market, 
seemed to have no earthly connection with the raw 
copper itself, which, standing higher than ever at this 
time, appeared to have no steadying effect upon the 
shares of the companies in the pool, perhaps because 
only a few were actually producing copper. 

Still, it was baffling to an amateur like myself who 
was trying to master the ins and outs of the thing, to 
see for instance the £1 f shares of the Glimmer Reef 
company which had never produced an ounce of 
copper, standing at 42s. 6d. a share in the market 
quotations, whilst the £1 shares of the Red Giant, 
which had been producing steadily for many months, 
and was also in the Rio Grande Group, stood only at 
25s. Perhaps it was the string-pulling. 

“The world could do without gold,” the “Financial 
Expert” had said indignantly in a series of scathing 
leaders which brought back to me my first copper 
halfpenny. “That was only a medium of exchange 
and adornment. It had to have copper. Copper for 
kettles and warships — copper for saucepans and shells 


206 


PASSION 


— copper to kill and to live by. It was disgraceful 
that a financial group should be permitted to waggle 
the market in something that was literally a matter of 
life and death. . . . We are not Socialists/’ they 
went on, “but if ever there were a case for State in- 
terference, it was here. In England at least we 
wanted no American trustification, and no Copper 
Kings.” 

But Mandrill said nothing, and for some reason or, 
other all at once the leaders stopped, perhaps because 
of the frantic boom in “Johnnies,” as the shares of 
the Johannesburg gold groups were known and the 
rush of public interest to gold. 

Anyhow, the shares of the Rio Grande and Copper 
Bottom groups after slumping heavily before the 
“pool,” during which the Copper Finance very wisely 
took the opportunity of increasing its personal hold- 
ings, began to lift under the pool influence, lifting day 
by day under some invisible pressure until for no 
apparent reason beyond perhaps the favourable notices 
which began to appear in the “Financial Owl,” “£. 
s. d,” and some of the smaller papers much patronised 
by “the-man-in-the-street” and especially by the coun- 
try investor, some of the shares which before the pool 
had sunk as low as 5 s. stood at £2 and over, or twice 
their par value. 

The little shareholders, who knew nothing of the 
“pool,” were overjoyed. They came round us each 
day, “like flies around a honey pot,” Hawkling said, 
and though some of them sold out at the big prices 
the majority held on tight for further rises and many 
under the stimulus of the “Owl” and another financial 
authority, the “Humming Bird,” increased their hold- 
ings, the Copper Finance very considerately releasing 


SQUID 207 

large blocks of the shares of the people in the pool 
for that purpose. But Nathan, through his hungry 
white teeth talked humorously at one of the Copper 
Finance board meetings about “unloading,” and this 
word was taken up by another big financial daily, the 
“Tribune,” which continued the attacks of the “Ex- 
pert” by saying that the men behind were “unloading” 
on the small investor and that a “slump” or fall was 
bound to come, leaving the public in the lurch. 

But the public did not seem to mind. They were 
“taking freely,” Vogel said in his wrinkled throat, 
and some thousands of new investors having tired of 
“Johnnies” and gold, streamed in to buy at the ever- 
lifting prices. 

Skinsole and Craggs were jubilant, having on paper 
if they cared to sell out, quite recouped their losses 
over Westingtons, and the Reverend Thomas Skin- 
sole's preaching was in high favour at the North 
London church. It was even said that some of his 
congregation sought share “tips” in his sermons, which 
they took symbolically. But for that, nobody could 
blame the Reverend Thomas, who had preached a very 
moving sermon from “Lay not up for yourselves 
treasures on earth where moth and dust doth cor- 
rupt . . .” nor Mandrill for that matter, for the big 
man had told Skinsole in my hearing: “You know, 
Skinsole, I really advise you and your congregation to 
leave copper alone. You may of course come out on top 
with the plums, but you may go to eternal smash.” 
But his strong horse teeth showed themselves smilingly 
as he said it, and the reverend gentleman smiled con- 
fidentially back and nodded, as though he understood 
perfectly. 

Further, Mandrill's Secretaries had strict instruc- 


208 


PASSION 


tions not to encourage this gambling, but to reply to 
the shoals of letters which streamed in from the share- 
holders in their companies asking for advice: that 
“Golgotha House ,, had nothing to do with gambling. 
If they wished to invest they must consult a stock- 
broker or financial papers like the “Owl” or “Hum- 
ming Bird,” or the “Financial Expert” or “Manipula- 
tor.” 

However at this time everything looked rosy. The 
pooled shares, and those which had escaped from the 
pool, stood higher than ever, for the public were 
“taking” more and more freely. Almost every day 
the financial papers were full of Mandrill’s pros- 
pectuses. Golgotha House with its promotions became 
a sort of Aladdin’s Cave ; and Mandrill was talked of 
more and more as “The Copper Man” and regarded 
as the authority on copper, though he very rightly 
disclaimed any expert knowledge — “he relied upon his 
copper experts for that,” and he made them responsi- 
ble for the statements in his prospectuses. The Con- 
strictor and Golconda groups were booming, turning 
out large quantities of raw copper, and Mandrill’s 
millions piled themselves automatically behind him in 
his banks. 

But there was always Squid. . . . 

I at least believed that human power and desire 
could no further go, but Mandrill was feverishly at 
work upon a new scheme. 

But there was always Squid. . . . 

We always felt the presence of this creature lurking 
out there in the deeps of American finance. As I have 
said, nobody knew much about this Squid. But you 
felt him. Mandrill felt him. 

These two monsters had sought each other out by 


SQUID 209 

some sort of elemental law — each recognised in the 
other his natural foe. They were fighting not for 
money — but for power — for the lust. Mandrill tore 
— Squid was a sucking thing. 

All kinds of tales gathered around this Squid. 
Some — many — even doubted his existence. He was 
still, deadly, if he existed — Mandrill noisy, tearing, 
but also deadly in his own way. We all doubted 
Squid’s existence until that day when I was called to 
the Den with those interminable calculations. 

I was waiting behind Mandrill’s chair as he sat at 
the head of the great crimson table — we had several 
Board Rooms, but he always used the Den for his 
special meetings — and there lay under the quiet, sure 
faces of the big men around the table a certain ex- 
pectancy, a tenseness. 

It was little Morkstein, the German Jew, sitting 
gnawing his moustache darkly, elbow in the hollow 
of his hand, who at last broke the silence with: “I 
wonder why he doesn’t come.” He looked at Vogel, 
who did not reply — he simply sat there crouching 
solemnly — a sort of parsonic fowl. 

“He’ll come soon enough,” said Nathan, baring his 
teeth, his eyes unsmiling: “he generally comes too soon 
— or when he’s not expected.” 

“Shut up! Nathan,” growled Mandrill, who for 
him appeared irritated. He was too big for that. 

“I don’t mind betting he doesn’t turn up,” went on 
Mandrill. “It’s a dodge of his to keep us uneasy. 
It stood to reason he wouldn’t come and beard us in 
our own den. That’s not his way. He always does 
the unexpected, but he has his habits all the same. If 
we could only squeeze him — pinch him on the Tenter- 
hooks deal to.feel him out — if. . . .” 


210 


PASSION 


The door opened. I could only see a broad-shoul- 
dered, padded man come in, his great claws gripping 
the handles of something, and behind him another 
sinewy, slipping- jawed brute, with something between 
them in a sort of chair with handles. 

The thing sat strongly upright in the chair. It was 
clothed in a dark grey suit ; its arms hung longly down 
the sides ; but the head — it was the head I saw. 

Mandrill sat stilled for a moment, the words dying 
in his throat — then he had plunged forward at the 
run and welcomed the thing in the chair with a hoarse 
bellow. The head in the chair scarcely moved. It 
might have nodded. But the long yellow curved hand 
came out like a tentacle and twined itself around 
Mandrill’s hairy paw. 

It was the face of a man who had been dead for 
centuries. It might have been the face of a man of 
ninety or forty — for this man had always looked like 
this— -one knew that. It was whipped into a palsy of 
fine lines, bald despite the half-dozen sparse hairs that 
were set down on the great domed hatchet skull, for 
the face and head, the cutting curved nose, the 
squeezed forehead, were all hatchet-shaped. The ears 
were almost non-existent and in-turned curiously like 
the cabbage ears of a boxer. In a way it reminded 
me of the head of a Roman boxer with cestus, muti- 
lated by time, I had once seen in the British Museum. 
These other men around the table were business men 
— big business — but Squid was something other. He 
was elemental — the thing behind them all. 

But the eyes, the sea-green eyes of the man, alone 
showed life — and they were living. In their depths, 
circumscribed and elusive and fathomless, there glit- 
tered cunning inconceivable — they were sucking — that 


SQUID 211 

is the word — sucking eyes, but as the movement of 
the chair turned him away, the light went out in them, 
leaving a sort of dead passion as in two dead lakes. 
And as they unwrapped the cloths from about his 
waist as though they were unpacking a mummy, and 
lifted him into a chair near Mandrill, I saw his lower 
members, shrivelled, twisted. The man was paralysed 
from the waist down. 

It was Squid. 


XXI 


THE GRAND MOGUL 

The head was with me all through the day, jostling 
my forebodings and anticipations of the evening. I 
was going to my first music-hall. 

It was rather a desperate affair, for the stage was 
still to me the gateway to hell. I had never been in a 
theatre and I was still very religious, even though the 
fires of my hells had slackened. If religion were not 
true, all things would be incredible. If men like 
Squid had not a lake of brimstone waiting for them, 
and the people in Fear Street the pearly gates and the 
golden floor, all life would be a mockery. . . . But 
there was Mandrill. ... I could not instal him in my 
place of torture — not even conscientiously. 

Even now I was not clear as to why I had said I 
would go when Miss Ella had told me that two tickets 
for the Grand Mogul had been given her by “a gentle- 
man friend,” who at the last moment found himself 
unable to take her. It was a city man, whom to his 
and my confusion, I had once met in her flat. He 
was a death’s head sort of man with a grey spade- 
beard, and no nose, and I recalled him, for Miss Ella 
said he was sometimes seized with pains in the heart 
or arms, I forget which, pains that doubled him up. 

She had looked so good and ordinary and “grey” 
212 


THE GRAND MOGUL 


213 


that evening and I was so lonely. I had been sitting 
down “being desperate” as I called it, when she 
knocked at the door to ask me, and I had consented, 
impulsively. I had regretted but had not the moral 
courage to tell her I had changed my mind — she might 
have thought I despised her — and I was always very 
careful not to hurt her . . . since that night in Picca- 
dilly. I could have said it to Mandrill, but not to her. 

We had never gone out together before, and al- 
though I had never taken Miss Ella more vividly than, 
say, my mother — she was as much part of Fear Street 
as my mother had been of home and with it so modest 
and deferential — the adventure of to-night changed it, 
and as I trimmed my shirt cuffs and the heels of my 
boots with my penknife, and put on the green foulard 
silk tie with the dark blotches which I had been unable 
to resist in Gracechurch Street at half-a-crown, my 
heart was a-flutter. 

I knocked on her door at half past seven. I heard 
her voice from the inner room, muffled, and went in. 

“Half a mo’, Mr. Tempest.” She always mistered 
me. 

There were sounds of happenings in the next room, 
and after a few minutes I turned round from looking 
at the empty fireplace to find standing between the 
curtains a new Miss Ella. She was in a pale pink 
dress, cut, for her, rather low, and which I knew 
somehow had not been made for her, the cleft filled 
with some kind of fichu thrust carelessly down as 
though she had not been quite sure of the effect. Her 
warm arms, in their plump shapeliness, came down 
from the pink shoulder knots, whilst her glorious hair 
she had piled high on her head as a crovra to the rich 
brown eyes which softly and expectantly glowed upon 


214 


PASSION 


me. There was an air of tensity too, as she stood 
there awaiting my verdict. 

As for me, I thought that a stranger stood there: 
I had never before thought of Miss Ella as a stranger 
— nor, for that matter, as a friend. I felt quite 
ashamed of my grey suit. 

Such elegance I felt needed a hansom, as I told her. 
However, “she was going it regardless,” she said in 
that curious hoarseness, and that I was her guest. She 
said it so nicely that, although I protested, I felt re- 
lieved, for I had only four shillings in my pocket, for 
emergencies. 

We drove through the glorious June night, I sitting 
as far as possible from her, mortally ashamed — and 
afraid. Through her white, rather discoloured, wrap, 
there seeped the scent of her body — I had never 
scented that before. I — I was exalted, and altogether 
wonderful. 

The flaring facade of the Grand Mogul, the coloured 
posters of be-tighted ladies and the red-nosed come- 
dian with square flopped boots; the movement on 
the pavement; and the Gorgon, brother to those men 
at Princes' — all made me afraid, but titillated me also. 
I should have been almost happy if I had not caught 
the perky cabman winking at Gorgon from his dickey 
as he stood up to lift the reins for Miss Ella to get 
out. That wink nearly spoiled everything, and went 
with me to and through the hypertrophied footmen 
who stood like giant strawberries dipped in cream, at 
the entrance to the stalls, who I felt despised me, as 
they undoubtedly did, and to the humble condescending 
young woman in muslin apron with blue silk bows 
who took us to our seats, who looked indifferently 
away as she took my shilling for our programmes 


THE GRAND MOGUL 


215 


upon which a frothing of skirt rioted about the slender 
black legs of a girl whose hair of ruddy-black waved 
behind her like a flag. 

“The big pots haven’t come yet,” explained Miss 
Ella, as I looked wonderingly at the empty seats and 
let my eyes range through the petering lights of the 
back and over the arabesque which swept above me 
tier on tier. The place was a sepulchre. 

“You know that sort don’t come till they’ve had 
their dinners . . . greedy-guts,” she followed on, 
ruminating. Miss Ella for some reason or other had 
always had a curious contempt for the upper-classes, 
tinged with an awesome inherited respect. 

As I turned to sit down in the back stall, something 
of green and gold sheened vastly under the half lights. 
It was the curtain which made me realise that I was 
really in a theatre. The back was sepulchral, the cur- 
tain unearthly, and reminded me in some way of the 
Cave. If it lifted, all things were possible. 

As I looked, lights in the sepulchre had shot up 
there and there, from under my nose a little man, with 
a black-cropped bullet head, was waving a baton in 
his white gloves — I could not take my eyes off the 
gloves, which were a miracle. And they were playing, 
the programme said, the prelude to the third act of 
Lohengrin, exalting, exulting. But the vast spaces of 
the house still seemed empty. 

There was a check. And they had broken into a 
lilting, unclean refrain. It caught me. I found my- 
self humming it, beating my feet to it, my fingers 
playing the devil’s tattoo on my knee. The curtains 
had swung aloft like the sails of an argosy, leaving to 
view a midget man with long square toes who stood, 
abandoned, in the acre of board. The orchestra went 


216 


PASSION 


back to the beginning of the refrain and a spatter of 
applause came from somewhere behind me, the autom- 
aton had burst into a hoarse bellow, the emptiness 
began to fill and, as the midget said — “we were off !” — 

“We're off — we’re off — we’re absolutely off — 

We’re off our bloomin’ crumpets and we won’t go home 
again.” 

I did not hear the midget. I did not see the stage — 
not in the first hour. I only know that as the evening 
went on I felt something warm playing on my spine; 
the place was filling with something — lights were 
coming out — vapours were rising — before me glob- 
ulous stomachs were slipping into the blue seats — 
bald heads threw back the lights rosy — the empty stall 
sockets were being filled with dazzling shoulders, with 
heads, red and fair and dark — and there were the big 
feline women of Princes’ with their claws sheathed 
and just before me the slender shoulders of a lady 
whose dress was held to decency by two slender green 
silk bands which sank into the soft pinkness of her 
flesh. 

Miss Ella had been sitting very still, awkwardly 
almost, but now she began to thaw. 

“Tell you what,” she bent towards me confidentially 
— “she ought to be ashamed of ’erself.” She gazed 
hard at the lady with the silk bands. “Calls them- 
selves toffs — think they’re respectable because they 
drive in their own carriages and leave the theatre for 
supper before the play is finished. They’re disgrace- 
ful — that’s what they are — disgraceful.” She was 
virtuously indignant. 

I hastened to agree very ardently in my democracy. 
“It’s the money that does it,” I said. And there came 


THE GRAND MOGUL 


217 


back to me my mother's remark about my uncle Jerry: 
“That man has too much money, James . . . that's 
what's the matter with him.” 

Miss Ella looked at me in surprise, a little indig- 
nant. “I do 'ope you’re not one of them Socialists. 
I don't 'old with them and their breaking up the 'ome. 
God bless your soul!” she said largely, “it isn’t the 
money. Let them have their money and good luck 
to them. You carn't have too much of it. It’s not 
the money — it's the way they use it. I knew a poor 
girl once in a Regent Street house that made dresses 
like that for ten shillings a week and her board and 
lodging — the board and lodging you get when you 
‘live in.' And that sort of flimsey woolsey costs 'un- 
dreds — creations they call 'em. That lot calls them- 
selves respectable because they have their married 
lines, but they’re no better than . . .” She stopped 
short and sat very tight for some minutes, the fulness 
of her lips compressed. 

The fever was rising. The smoke of the cigars 
streamed upwards in thin grey-blue spirals from the 
white waistcoats. The faces of the big men took a 
higher shade of crimson as the lights seemed to light 
up one by one in their faces, in their eyes, in the glaze 
of their skulls. Their women, for all their “married 
lines,” were relaxing under the heat of the place, and 
the slender lady before me was bending quickly and 
talking excitedly to her cavalier — a big broad-shoul- 
dered young man, dark and good-looking, who seemed 
to me my ideal of an Oxford man. She struck him 
on the face with her ivory fan. One of the green 
shoulder-knots was slipping over the curve of her 
shoulder. 


218 


PASSION 


She ordered a whisky and soda with her friend, and 
laughed at herself. ‘‘I really shouldn’t,” she twittered. 

“Tell you what, I could do with a lemon squash. 
Couldn’t you?” asked Miss Ella. “I am that thirsty.” 

Confident in my three shillings, for Miss Ella had 
insisted upon giving me the cab fare, I said “yes,” 
though I really wished she wouldn’t. I was ashamed 
to order. I wanted to sit there and watch all these 
people as I watched in the Euston Road. 

As our squashes came superciliously at the hands 
of the girl in the muslin apron, for which I was glad 
Miss Ella let me pay, she expounded her views upon 
drinks as she sucked through her straw: 

“I don’t ’old,” it was her favourite expression when 
she was shocked, “I don’t ’old with women drinking 
whisky and soda . . she nodded, the straw still in 
her mouth, sideways at the lady before us. “I call it 
a disgrace to her sex — drinking spirits in public. I 
can do with a glass myself, sometimes, but it is only 
low girls that do that sort of thing. Now, I could 
do with a Guinness — that’s nourishing, keeps you go- 
ing — but you can’t drink a Guinness in the stalls. 
Rum, ain’t it? 

“But you wait,” she broke off excitedly, as No. 10 
shot out in the side frame. “This is Irene de Vere. 
She does the real toff to a treat. Fair split your 
sides.” 

The band was playing a slow checking measure, like 
a minuet, as a tall, graceful girl, a lorgnette to her 
eyes, strutted to the centre of the stage. She was 
draped in a lace dress — “real Limerick,” said Miss 
Ella breathlessly — and she sang of her presentation 
at Court, every now and then making a sweeping 
curtsey of subsidence to the floor where she rested 


THE GRAND MOGUL 


219 


upon her heel for a moment before rising. Her super- 
ciliousness was magnificent. She was the lady to the 
life. 

But I noticed that although the big well-fed men 
roared, their wives and women-folk looked on with 
tightened disapproving smiles. I could not understand 
it. To me Miss de Vere looked the lady — very like 
those others before me, only not so naked. 

But Miss Ella disabused me. “Yes, she's good — 
but bless you she's not it. You can't be 'it' if you're 
not born in the purple. The dress is right — the hat 
is right — the shoes are right — the curtsey too — I've 
seen them practice . . . but you can't mistake 'em. 
If it's not the voice it's the gloves — if it’s not the 
gloves it's the nose — and if it’s not the nose it’s some- 
thing else. Sometimes it’s nothing. But it's there. 
They can't take me in. I know the genuine article 
. . . well what I call a real lady. . . . I've seen 'em 
at. . . 

Again she pulled up and was silent. 

“See that big woman there — that foreigner coming 
in with the little pimply man in the grey suit. You 
can smell her from here. Musk. I don't 'old with 
foreigners. Well, you might think she was the genuine 
thing — like them others, but bless you ! the scent does 
it. Those others" — she looked about her — “they scent 
themselves so that you can’t say which is scent and 
which them . . . what they call a soupsong. ... We 
can't do it — we others . . ." — there was resignation 
in her voice — “anyhow it doesn't matter much." 

The bloated woman with the heavy chops and the 
delicate little ears with the tiny pearl earrings, near 
whom “the foreigner" had sat, had carefully drawn 
her skirts away from her. I showed it to Miss Ella. 


220 


PASSION 


“A dirty shame,” I said. “She is no better than her.” 
I became ungrammatical, incoherent. The atmosphere 
was elevating and heroic. 

But Miss Ella was not indignant. “Why shouldn’t 
she?” was her comment. “You can’t expect a swell to 
want to sit next that sort — it stands to sense. You 
wouldn’t like one of your own sisters to sit next . . . 
well, next me. It’s all right for you, for you’re a man 
. . . but a woman — that’s different,” she said, looking 
at me momentarily. It was the first time she had 
made any reference to herself and the first time anyone 
had called me “a man.” 

I blushed. For all my democracy, the larger democ- 
racy of Fear Street, it was true. But I lied like “a 
man:” “If it’s good enough for me, it’s good enough 
for my sister . . . and I haven’t got a sister,” I re- 
joined, and tried to look, and feel, convinced. 

“Nothing to go red about . . . you’re such a one 
to blush,” she went on. “One is the permanent article 
— the other for after hours. . . . 

“Oh!” she said long drawn out and then more 
slowly — “the Joss ...” her lips parted, her face white 
as she stared at a big glaucous man, yellow of face 
and hairless, who walked across the front of the 
orchestra. 

“What is it?” I asked. 

But I knew in some underhand unconscious way. 
The colossus sat there, his long creased body standing 
high over the others, his little dumpy thighs twisted 
under him — his chubby fingers clutching a cigar. He 
looked like the Grand Mogul himself, whoever “the 
Grand Mogul” might be — like a Chinese joss. Wick- 
edness inconceivable, bizarre, glowed in the depths of 


THE GRAND MOGUL 221 

his little hairless eyes. What could Miss Ella know of 
him? 

But Miss Ella knew so much about all sorts of 
people — so much more than I — than anyone. 

But there was a rustling of programmes, a flutter 
about us. 

It was the ballet: “The Girls of England.” The 
programme said “the loveliest girls in England 
nightly.” The place was simmering like a great pot. 
There was a movement in the closepacked seats before 
us. Above us those richly-dressed women who had 
leant listless over the first tier as they stood, now be- 
gan to move — one or two detached themselves and 
walked about. I thought there were some men there. 

The orchestra was playing patriotic songs — the pit 
and topmost tier humming the refrains, the cropped 
man with the baton taking his men like a magician 
through the kaleidoscopic changes. The green cur- 
tains fled upwards, scintillating like a gorgeous butter- 
fly that closes its wings, and “The Girls of England” 
had begun. 

For the first time I began to really watch the stage. 
But I felt ashamed. I felt that each one of that bevy 
of fleshed girls focussed me — that they knew I was 
looking at them. That I had paid so much to come 
there to look at them. I felt as embarrassed as 
though I were in a lady’s bedroom — ashamed and 
mean. 

I believed that everybody there was looking at me ; 
and it was only when I saw the forest of opera-glasses 
levelled on the stage that I knew people were not look- 
ing at me . . . but even then I felt the concentrated 
gaze of those behind. 

Now I knew that the theatre was the antechamber 


222 


PASSION 


to hell — knew this was what “the world, the flesh, 
and the devil” betokened. The lights spun round me. 
The passion of the hours. 

If I could only get my breath. But the orchestra, 
that terrible orchestra, would not rest — the imp with 
the baton was tireless. He swung them from scene 
to scene. From the sober greys and blacks of the 
first scene to those others, when the greyness became 
tinged with pink, and the pink flushed like a blush 
rose, and the white shoulders showed more nakedly 
under the limelight which streamed piteously upon 
them. The passion of the hours. 

And the flesh had become encarmined. The faces 
of the men about me were encarmined. The big 
mouths were loosening — invisible slaver was dropping 
from them. And there was the Joss, whose little eyes 
twinkled wickedly behind their folds of flesh, glau- 
cine. . . . And then there was respite. 

For a plain little lass in a Salvation Army dress 
and poke bonnet was singing a Salvation song to the 
“There is a Happy Land” of my childhood. It came 
in slow and measured beat, sweet to the ear. . . . And 
now there was a check in it . . . and now it was 
lilting, changing. And as it changed, the girl changed 
with it. The hard lines of the little figure began to 
soften, to loosen, to move. And now the movement 
had spread to her clothes, until as the music rose in 
pulsing spirals to the gilded roof and the circus of 
the place spun about me in the hoarse crackling silence, 
they had fallen away from her and she stood before 
me, my blood turgid in the passion of high midnight, 
the girl on the programme, her hair waving to the 
starry lights, her frills and furbelows flaunting them- 
selves out of the blackness of her knee skirts, her 


THE GRAND MOGUL 


223 


slender limbs whirling and beckoning and cozening. 
Behind her the chorus had filled, the stage a-shimmer, 
was one mass of rioting flesh — pink and tender and 
smooth — white and pink and red — with ever before 
the Salvation girl stringing the whole — the world, the 
flesh, and the devil. 

The curtains had swung down and I found myself 
outside, the night air blowing on my face. Miss Ella 
looked drunk; the people about us drunk — or was it 
I who was drunk? 

It was. I can remember finding myself seated in 
a little rosy room, shaded in at a corner table, and 
Miss Ella choosing the supper. I remember a tall bald 
solemn waiter drawing a screen round the table, and 
I can remember refusing soup, which I hated, and 
eating twice of wild duck served in a little copper 
casserole. It comes back to me that Miss Ella ex- 
pressed her admiration when I refused to take wine, 
and called me “a silly” the next moment. And then 
the length of the courses something concentrated 
through my nostrils — I remember it was through my 
nostrils — upon my companion, through the Salvation 
girl — something undreamable — mean. The passion of 
the hours. 

And I remember putting it away — but always for 
it to come back. Something that lodged in the coils 
of her hair — nestled down there in her corsage. Some- 
thing impossible — something that ebbed and flowed 
with every pulsation of my blood. 

It did not leave me in the cab as we drove back to 
Fear Street. In that narrow space it held close to me. 
I felt the body warmth coming to me — that scent — 
saw the half parted lips of my companion. 


224 


PASSION 


Another transformation, and we were in her rooms. 
We sat down before the empty hearth and did not 
speak. She said I looked “funny/' and laughed 
nervously. 

And as she sat there, her white wrap lying about 
her on the chair, she relaxed as she did that first night, 
her beautiful body fell a little forward, the cleft of 
her corsage became unstopped . . . and the madness 
had seized, and I was on my knees before her try- 
ing to kiss her. 

She had stood up, her eyes staring, her lips 
parted. . . . 

“What do you take me for?” she asked as though 
she had been running. “Oh, my God ! You above all. 
You/' She looked at me horrifically, I still on my 
knees feeling chilled and unutterably foolish and 
ashamed. 

I don’t know what I said to her — I think I was 
crying, but as I went out I heard little Albert Victor 
wailing. Little McWhirter was hissing at his wife 
behind the closed door over the way. 


XXII 


LITTLE ALBERT 

That evening with Miss Ella made me unsure of 
myself — for the first time in my life. At the time, the 
thing seemed definite, unredeemable as the fall of 
Lucifer. In my darkest moments of the Cedars, of 
Fear Street, in the Cave, I had always felt sure of 
myself at least — and now the I of the Grand Mogul 
had been a traitor to that other “I” — had sold the 
pass. I could have faced it if it had been I who had 
saved myself at the eleventh hour — but to remember 
that it had not been I, but Miss Ella, a common . . . 

There I stopped. I was not quite so mean — not 
even in my despair. 

In the days that followed, I knew for the first time 
the meaning of the phrase: “His heart turned to 
water. ,, The foundations of my being were in dis- 
solution. I had lost something — something of virtue. 

I can only express it in that way — the virtue — the 
virtue of my egotism if you will, but still my virtue, 
had gone out of me — left me at the touch of a woman. 
I hated Miss Ella. I hated myself. 

It was Swinger I think who brought me a little to 
myself, with a remark on my toilet — Swinger was al- 
ways talking about “a man’s toilet” — “Look at your 
toilet, man — it’s gone to the dogs. Look as if you’d 
left yourself out all night and forgot to bring yourself 
home.” 


225 


226 


PASSION 


It was Swinger, but it was true enough in its way. 
My toilet had gone to the dogs: my dress was always 
an accurate reflex of my moral. 

Looking back now, I don’t think there was any 
earthly power able to depress me permanently. I was 
resilient, and the first signs of my recovery was the 
wretchedness I felt about forfeiting the esteem of 
Miss Ella, an esteem of which I was only now con- 
scious, who avoided me as I her. Even this wretched- 
ness was perhaps tinged with egotism, but it was 
nevertheless very real. Egotism at least is always real. 

I had been lying awake in the hot summer night 
wondering how I should beg Miss Ella’s pardon, and 
my own, when there came a short sharp knock on 
my door. And then a voice, urgent, hoarse: “Mr. 
Tempest! Mr. Tempest!” 

There was something in the voice which brought 
me out of bed and padding in all too foreshortened 
nightshirt to the door, which I opened. 

It was Miss Ella, a great rope of hair hanging loose 
over her nightgown. “Come! oh, come! . . . quick 
. . . little Albert . . . little Albert.” 

Her bare feet pattered back to her room, through 
the open door of which I thought I could see a man 
moving about hurriedly under the lowered lights of 
the chandelier. It was only a glimpse, and I registered 
it unconsciously, but it came back to me afterwards 
and I thought ... I thought it was the man with the 
spade beard. 

At any rate after I had pulled on a pair of trousers 
and run across he had disappeared — if he had ever 
been there. 

“Oh, come ! come ! come !” and then : “Little Albert 
. . . Little Albert.” 


LITTLE ALBERT 


227 


The voice, automatic, came to me through the heavy 
curtains from the other room. I went in. 

Miss Ella's bed was lying open, the bedclothes 
thrown back to the floor. Tiny, in the centre of the 
great bed, propped up upon the double pillows, was 
little Albert Victor, his mother bending over him in 
her nightgown and moaning steadily, evenly: “Come! 
Come! . . . Little Albert! Little Albert!” which 
sounded through the gurgle that filled the room like 
water rising through a choked pipe. There was some- 
thing inexpressibly shocking about her nightgown — it 
was so plain and respectable. 

The child lay there, with two slits of bluey-white 
showing in the livid skin. The little gnarled hands 
were loose enough now, not pulled in or distorted 
harshly, but lying listless, and the face, dwarfish, con- 
centrated, as though the inhabitant were busy some- 
where, fighting, or was it arranging, something ? 
whilst through the room there came that dreadful 
gurgle; stertorous, insistent. 

“Little Albert . . ." and then “my pet . . . my 
pet . . . my little lamb. My only one, my ewe lamb.” 

Even I could see that things were imminent; that 
little Albert lay on the razor-edge of destiny. I had 
plunged out of the room, thrown on a coat and boots, 
and had run down the street to the dispensary at the 
corner. I wrenched at the night-bell but got no reply. 
I pulled and pulled ... a policeman came across the 
street, one or two of Fear Street's night birds gath- 
ered around silent as always, and then a head was 
poked out of the first floor front, a big bulging head 
with a young face, expostulating, wearied. . . . 

“Really — really!" And then more impatient. “Will 
you leave that bell alone?" 


228 


PASSION 


It disappeared. It was a very tired, bored young 
man who came with me up the stairs of the Fear 
Street house. He was bored to death, bored with 
Fear Street and its interminable measles and whoop- 
ing cough and fleas; worn out with “the sixpennies” 
— he was known as the Sixpenny Doctor, for you 
stuck your tongue out, he said “sixpence/’ and gave 
you a bottle with a pink mixture. 

Poor devil ! It was not his fault, and “we all have 
to live.” He had had visions of slashing operations — 
he was I believe a clever surgeon — and he got . . . 
Fear Street. 

He viewed my dress with disapproval — a tacit dis- 
approval I felt in my back, evidently expecting more 
from a youth with at least the speech of education. 
He viewed and felt the holes of the big stairs with 
disapproval. And when he got into Miss Ella’s fourth 
front, he viewed her, her nightgown, and her room 
with disapproval . . . even, I thought, little Albert. 

He slipped something into the poor, parted lips of 
the child. Looked at it. Hummed, hawed, and said, 
indifferent: “I will send you some medicine and it 
must have a steam kettle.” He spoke about it as 
though it were something of the neuter gender. He 
was too tired even to look professional. 

“But will he . . . will he die, Sir?” asked Miss 
Ella with that note of respect and fear which always 
crept into her voice when she spoke to people like the 
Sixpenny Doctor. 

He looked hurt. The question seemed indecent — 
unprofessional. 

“You must have a steam kettle,” he repeated, now 
having a grip on himself again. And then, admissive, 
condescending: “The boy is ill.” 


LITTLE ALBERT 


229 


“But will my boy die — my little boy — my little 
Albert? . Can’t you tell a girl straight? Now, can’t 
you?” pleadingly. 

The note was changing. There was something 
challenging, almost brutal in it, as she looked at the 
big forehead, the tired eyes, almost defiant. 

The Sixpenny Doctor turned his back on her, picked 
up his bowler, and went out, saying curtly: “Keep the 
steam kettle going.” The professional instinct was 
asserting itself again. It was not only a steam kettle 
that had to be kept going. 

“Oh, my God! He means he’ll die . . . he means 
he’ll die. Why don’t he say what he means . . . oh, 
my God! my God! My little Albert — my little Al- 
bert. . . ” 

The girl’s voice died away behind us as I followed 
the doctor on to the landing. I was not so easily 
stifled. I wanted to strike him. But instead I asked 
him apologetically: “Is it serious, doctor?” 

Something in my voice changed him from a pro- 
fessional man into a human being. “I think it’s diph- 
theria — but I can’t say till I take a swab from his 
throat in the morning. We must send it to the Bac- 
teriological Hospital, to-morrow. With a “Good- 
night!” a little less curt, he left me standing on the 
doorstep. 

The boy lay through the night, his breath coming 
heavy, stertorous, with something of an ebb and flow 
in it and recurrent stillnesses, like the pulsing of a 
tide, that came to me as I lay on the hard sofa as I 
had lain that first night. I feared to leave Miss Ella. 
She would not lie down or sleep, only stood there in 
the next room moaning as the hours dragged by: 


230 PASSION 

“Little Albert. . . . Little Albert,” with long silences 
between. 

I got the kettle going — we had no proper steam 
kettle — banked up the fire and borrowed some of the 
water to make her a cup of tea. She took it humbly, 
and to my grief and shame once kissed the hand that 
held the cup. It was her way to thank me. 

The doctor did not keep his promise to come in the 
morning, and still the boy lay there, the eyes turned 
upwards, the hair no longer furry but dank where it 
grew low on the forehead, the half parted livid lips, 
the tide rising and falling in his throat. 

At 9 o'clock I went again for the Sixpenny Doctor, 
who after some grumbling about “women like Miss 
Ella” came and took his swab, which seemed to give 
him a certain professional satisfaction, though he ig- 
nored all Miss Ella’s appeals as to whether Albert 
Victor would die. That seemed to him of supreme 
unimportance. Death, like life, was an incident. 
Disease was the thing — label it. 

He would look in again during the day when the 
thing had been labelled. 

I had to leave her, my eyes dead with sleep, at 9.30 
for the Cave. It was one of our big days, and Hawk- 
ling was more snappy than ever, for I had been slack- 
ing off since that night at the Grand Mogul. 

As, tired out, I got back to Fear Street at 10 that 
night, I thought I heard something moan as I came 
up to the fourth floor. I listened. 

“. ... Now he won’t have to lie awake with his 
big eyes and see things any more. . . .” 

I stumbled over something that lay there against 
my door. It clung about my feet. I half led, half 
carried Miss Ella through into her room. 


LITTLE ALBERT 231 

“What is it? What is it?” I asked. But I knew. 
It was only that I felt I had to say something. 

“He won’t have to lie awake with his big eyes and 
see things any more . . . any more,” she repeated 
again in that dead voice. And then again and yet 
again the words that had been in my ears throughout 
the day: “Little Albert. . . . Little Albert.” 

She took me by the hand, her eyes dry, and led me 
through the curtains. She pointed at the thing on 
the bed, stupidly, and then looked at me like a child 
might look at its father. 

“Little Albert,” she said, inevitably. 

The little boy had changed. The eyes, surprised in 
death, were closed, smiling, and the face certainly 
did not look “dead” any more than Kathleen had 
looked dead: it looked more alive than I had ever 
seen it. The hair seemed to have grown away from 
the eyes. The cheeks were full, the little hands and 
arms lying naturally — so naturally. The child had 
finished his business, whatever it was. 

But there was something I missed — there was no 
gurgle. The tide had ebbed. 

I slept that night on the sofa. I was afraid to leave 
Miss Ella. She was always tearless, and now silent. 
At least no sound came to me from the bedroom. 

I found Mrs. S. and brought her to stay with Miss 
Ella before I went to the City the next day. But Miss 
Ella would not have her — would have no one there: 
“Leave me alone . . . leave me alone ...” she said 
again and again. “Can’t you see I must talk to my 
little Albert?” She spoke importantly. “I want to 
be alone with him.” She was silent a moment as 
though thinking. Defiant, high: 

“You think he’s dead. He’s not dead — not dead!” 


232 PASSION 

and then the wail — “Little Albert . . . my little Al- 
bert.” 

“Now, dearie,” said Mrs. S., the blind eye full of 
mother’s milk. “Now, dearie.” She put her arm 
about her to lead her from the bed, so gently, so 
sweetly, but Miss Ella flung it away. “Leave me 
alone — leave me alone. . . .” She began to put his 
toys on his bed about him. A little horse I had given 
him with a nodding head which always made him 
grin (he did not know how to laugh), but the head 
had come off — a ridiculous rag Punch that he loved 
most of all — a ball with which his poor cramped hands 
could never play. All the little things he had liked. 
And she crooned over him . . . crooned. Then burst 
out: 

“He’s not dead. I tell you he’s not dead. . . . It’s 
a lie, a lie! . . . a lie of the Sixpenny Doctor’s.” 

The time went on, but the little body could not stay 
there. And I had to tell her ... to try and tell 
her. . . . 

“You know little Albert must be laid to rest. . . 
The words sounded poor, abject . . . mean. 

“To rest, yes, to rest,” she murmured looking at me 
trustfully. “He’s tired with playing now. Little 
Albert.” She smiled over him, terribly. 

I held up. But I went out to see Mr. Nodes. 

He was a thin little self-contained man was Mr. 
Nodes, the Interring Specialist, as he called himself 
on his door. A pinched silent man — voluble only un- 
der his grievances and foreigners. “A man of his 
bond,” he confided secretively. “English to the back- 
bone!” “Cash down and no trust.” Mr. Nodes 
steadfastly refused a coffin. “Cash down and no 
trust ! That’s my motto. I’ve been done in my time 


LITTLE ALBERT 


233 


by these ’ere foreigners, I ’ave . . . they come to me 
for their little wooden overalls and they don’t pay 
for ’em . . . no, I’m a Henglishman — something to 
be ‘done’ — a Henglishman.” Nobody could doubt it. 

“Never no more,” he added, cumulative, and shut 
his lips tight. 

“Seven and twenty shillings and dirt cheap” — but 
no trust. What was I to do? I hadn’t five shillings 
in the world, and owed for my last suit. Appeals to 
Mrs. S. as to Mr. Clarence, who poor fellow was 
generous enough whenever he had anything with 
which to be generous, showed them as the latter said 
“in Queer Street.” They could manage ten shillings 
between them. I asked Miss Ella. . . . 

She was white-faced, and I thought she did not 
understand, but she did: “I haven’t a shilling in the 
wide. I owe everywhere . . . and there was a pound 
I expected . . . that day” . . . she faced me, her 
eyes hard . . . “and it hasn’t come,” she added 
lamely. 

I thought hard. “The furniture” I said, tentative- 
ly. “A piece of furniture.” 

“It isn’t mine,” she said — “I owe for rent on it 
now. It’s a friend’s.” 

“Only twenty-seven shillings,” I said, “and I — we 
— can manage a pound between us. A plain ...” I 
hesitated . . . “casket,” I added. “The ... the 
. . . resting-place” — it was becoming increasingly 
difficult to explain . . . “the resting-place will cost 
nothing.” 

“Listen,” said Miss Ella suddenly alive ; “I tell you 
I’m going to have the best” ... in a whisper, “for 
my little Albert. He’s goin’ to have his own carriage 


234 


PASSION 


and plumes and mourners in long bands and his own 
grave ... no pauper’s grave for my little Albert.” 

I thought again. I had thought of selling my own 
table and chairs, or pawning them, that should mean 
ten shillings, anyhow — but plumes and mourners, that 
meant pounds . . . and his own grave. 

I thought desperately. ... It came to me. . . . 
“Madame Angelica” I whispered. 

I don’t know what came over her. But she 
screamed “Never so help me Gawd. Never . . . 
never I tell you . . . my little Albert . . . ’er . . . 
never !” 

Then ... “I can manage two pounds if he will 
take that on account. My God ! he shall have the rest. 
Every bit of it. If they’ll lend me the pound I’ll find 
the rest.” 

She stood up, resolution in her white face, her eyes 
blazing. I heard her washing herself. She dressed 
herself, pottering about with her toilet things, and 
went out. 

She came back in the evening and handed me a 
pound. “Take that. You’ll have the other to-mor- 
row.” I supposed she had conquered her repugnance 
and gone to Madame Angelica. But I felt mean, 
horribly mean, as though it were I who was driving 
a bargain with her. 

Mr. Nodes I had settled with: “Three down and 
the balance in a fortnight.” The grave people were 
not so difficult. And the doctor, the doctor who had 
been too busy to come that day little Albert finished 
his business, handed me a scientifically written certifi- 
cate, and having told me “It was diphtheria,” felt he 
had nothing more to do with the matter — as indeed 
he had not. 


LITTLE ALBERT 


235 


That night I slept in my bed. But towards three 
in the morning I thought I heard a man’s voice on the 
landing say: “Good-night, dearie!” But I must have 
dreamt it. 

Yet I thought I heard . . . “Good-night, dearie!” 
and a door closing hurriedly. 

The next morning Miss Ella handed me the other 
pound. I did not ask her where she had got it. I did 
not dare. 

Mr. Nodes himself brought the little coffin under 
his arm done up in brown paper as though it had 
been a bandbox, before I left the next day, and on my 
return in the evening, Miss Ella met me on the stairs, 
handed me the key of her room and said only: “Go 
in.” She went down the stairs, silent, white-faced. 

Little Albert lay there in the padded fringed coffin, 
his face now dead. He looked like a thing of frosted 
sugar — like a wedding cake. 

The next day little Albert had his waving white 
plumes, and draped horse, and even a mourner, all 
complete, not even forgetting the clergyman ; for Miss 
Ella, displaying hitherto unsuspected theological con- 
victions, insisted upon having a clergyman, “a proper 
clergyman” she said, by which she meant a clergyman 
of the Church of England, who officiated collectively 
in the cemetery church over the three tiny white 
trestled coffins which lay before the altar in the democ- 
racy of death. 

To my astonishment, McWhirter, not hissing, in a 
blue shirt and wisp bow, looking like a shipwrecked 
sailor who had just changed, turned up at the grave- 
side with his wife, shyly, she looking more than ever 
like the original of all the Indian maidens. 

Mr. Clarence was also there, looking almost pain- 


236 


PASSION 


fully aristocratic in a air of new black kid gloves 
and black tie and patent boots, the left slightly broken 
over the little toe, as I noticed. His moustache was 
waxed to the extremest. His wife, sweet and sad- 
faced, in her ordinary clothes of dark grey, was with 
him. She needed no mourning. 

But it was little Mauri, outpost of eastern civilisa- 
tion, perched on a big lump of yellow clay, who 
dominated the situation. There he stood, his leathery 
ears standing out from under the shelter of a new 
shiny top hat with a curly brim of the latest pattern, 
frock coat gathered gracefully around his little yellow 
waist, fashionable grey trousers, and a pair of patent 
boots like Mr. Clarence’s, only without the break. 
His left hand was covered by a white kid glove, the 
fellow of which it carried. (I think Mauri had flimsy 
ideas about funerals, and I thought I had read some- 
where that white was the mourning colour in the Land 
of the Chrysanthemum.) I don’t know why, but he 
brought back to me the midget at the Grand Mogul — 
a sort of comical grotesque — but solemn and dignified. 
. . . And we laid little Albert deep, very deep in the 
yellow clay. 

“I didn’t have him buried with the paupers!” Miss 
Ella, dry-eyed, said triumphantly. She looked utterly 
respectable in her black dress, hat and gloves as we 
walked away. 

When we returned to Fear Street, Mrs. Clarence, 
who had refused to enter the church as “a temple of 
the unbelievers,” but who looked more sorry than any 
of us, came with Miss Ella and me into the empty 
rooms — so empty now — and asked us quietly, in that 
unostentatious way that she had, to pray with her. 
Little Mauri in some way had attached himself to us, 


LITTLE ALBERT 


237 


perhaps from some notion of etiquette, or perhaps as 
a human being — though that seemed inconceivable. 

At any rate he knelt down too, drawing up the 
knees of his trousers and putting his little yellow face 
in his gloved hands in orthodox fashion. He was very 
exact in his Western civilisation, was Mauri. 

Mrs. Clarence prayed very simply and surely, and 
satisfactorily plucked Albert Victor as a brand from 
the burning. He was too little even for her all-capa- 
cious hell. Miss Ella, still dry-eyed and dreaming, 
knelt also, but when the praying was over I heard 
her promise Mrs. Clarence, now more urgently relig- 
ious, to go next Sunday to the meeting-house of the 
Inner Friends. It seemed there was also an Outer 
Friends, who however were more or less on the brink ^ 
of the Pit, if not actually in it. 

We then all went downstairs, Miss Ella still dream- 
ing. It had been Mr. Clarence’s idea, imbibed from 
Fear Street, with its funeral feasts and baked meats, 
that to liven her up Miss Ella should have a bite of 
something. And there we found to our surprise 
Madame Angelica, who in some obscure way of her 
own had introduced herself into the bosom of Mr. 
Clarence’s family, bobbing mournfully, Miss Ella 
taking her hand like a dead woman. And there too 
were the classical outlines of the Misses Quest, who 
as we ate our cake and sipped our tea were I noticed 
more quietly demonstrative than ever to Mrs. Clarence 
and more watchful of each other in that pensive 
cattish way, whilst in a corner, one eye looked mourn- 
fully over a great nose. It was Big Reggie. 

We were all very silent at the beginning until 
Madame Angelica in her own wonderful way, and 
without indecency, got us going by gently stimulating 


238 


PASSION 


chatter, soft and soothing — even Mauri once smiled 
in that idol way of his — but she did not thaw Miss 
Ella, though as we rose to go she whispered to her 
as she put on her arm the pointed nails of one of those 
shining hands: “You will come to me in Dragon 
Square, now dearie, won’t you? You know little 
Albert always liked me.” 

She said “dearie” unpleasantly, “commonly.” I had 
never seen Madame Angelica common before. 

Miss Ella and I went upstairs. I was beginning to 
be afraid about Miss Ella and her tearless face. I 
felt the face like an overtautened string. Something 
was bound to go. 

We were face to face in her rooms — I miserable, 
ineffective — she dumb. But I could not leave her — 
I was afraid to leave her ... or of something. 

At that moment, tense, fateful, there came the 
crackle of a tin piano and a voice high, clear, singing: 

“Winds that blow from the South 
Whisper and I shall hear . . 

I think it was the music, or rather something be- 
hind it — but in a burst of uncontrollable certainty I 
told her the oldest story in the world — that there was 
no death, that nothing died, not even little Albert. 
“Winds that blow from the South . . .” the voice rose 
higher, and my imagination, taking wing, bore us 
sunward out of the Fear Street room. Perhaps it was 
my words — perhaps it was the piano — but Miss Ella 
began to sob, short, harsh, hot-breathed gusts — the 
tears flowed down her face as she hid it in her hands , t 
and the voice came unerring, assured: 

“Come from the lips of my loved one . . . 

Whisper and I shall hear . . . shall hear ...” 


XXIII 


THE HOUSE IN DRAGON SQUARE 

Little Albert and his business had I felt once and 
for all pulled that thing out by the roots — if it had 
any roots and was not myself. It finished what that 
night at the Grand Mogul had begun. Miss Ella in 
her grief was sacrosanct. All the Miss Ellas of Lon- 
don were sacrosanct. 

I was her knight-errant. I lusted to joust for her, 
and for grief-stricken abandoned womanhood gener- 
ally, against the world, for after little Albert I was 
very high and elevated and fervent, and I needed it 
all, for Miss Ella, who was always breaking into fits 
of sobbing, turned more and more to me in her 
despair. “Little Albert had always liked me,” she 
said, apologetic. 

I accompanied her to the meeting-house of the 
Inner Friends on the Sunday, but despite the ministra- 
tions of the brother with the long shaven upper lip 
and beard, like the Man in Sackcloth who as a child 
had been my conception of the Godhead, Miss Ella 
confided in me as we walked back: “I can't stand 
them chapel folk ...” and she added in a choked 
voice: “No real robes nor nothing. I'm Church.” 

There had been quite a commotion in Fear Street. 
A real brougham ; two black horses ; and a letter ; the 
last of which we found in Mrs. S.'s possession, handed 
to her by a real footman. It was a big square envelope 
239 


240 


PASSION 


from which came impalpable the scent of white moths, 
in an angular hand all triangles and twists like a 
magician's cap, and it was from Madame Angelica to 
me — to me, who never got a letter ! And it asked me 
to bring Miss Ella that afternoon to Dragon Square 
as had been arranged. She wanted to settle about a 
cross for little Albert. The letter was unsigned. 

Miss Ella went white. She always did when 
Madame Angelica came on the scene. “She and 'er 
arranged! There was nothing "arranged/ Never . . . 
'er . . . a cross . . . she knew I wanted a cross . . . 
oh ! she ! . . . She used to play with little Albert . . . 
let on to be fond of him . . . and he was fond of 
'er/' she added puzzled. ""She could do anything she 
liked with him/' 

Miss Ella would, or perhaps could, never explain 
her emotions about the Old Lady of the Curls. She 
did not explain them now, only said that she had once 
been to the house in Dragon Square, and I thought 
she shook as though she were cold. But something 
seemed to give way. She murmured to herself : 

. . Well, if it's got to be, it's got to be, and she 
said I would always do what she asked in the end . . .'' 
and consented, for I, since that night outside Princes', 
had been eager, curious, to see the house in the Square, 
to hear Madame Angelica's philosophy of beauty and 
power again, and to learn her secret. 

We walked to Dragon Square, one of those old- 
world squares of Bloomsbury, with the railed gardens 
in the centre and the walks that nobody uses — gardens 
now russet and brown under the dying September sun. 
A century or two ago Dragon Square had been the 
haunt of fashion. It had held on as long as it could 
to its beaus and fops; to its carriages and balls and 


THE HOUSE IN DRAGON SQUARE 241 

routs. But it had given up the struggle, which had 
rusted its railings; peeled its fronts; broken its stone 
ornaments — and set the gangrene of time in its gar- 
goyles. It had degenerated into Bloomsbury pensions , 
foreign musicians, and “apartments,” though its 
gloomy fa£ades clung to the relics of old decency 
through one or two professional men of the old- 
fashioned sort. 

One thing there, “The Dragon House,” had however 
held itself intact through the centuries, owner after 
owner adding to, but never taking from, yielding it 
all they had of wealth or art — some said even of life 
itself. 

It was a corner house, staring boldly, insolently, 
over the rest of the square, with something of iron in 
its look. Its bright-black railings with the gaping 
dragon links that had extinguished the torches of a 
by-gone day, on either side of the bare white steps, 
twisted and turned themselves into a chevaux-de-frise 
of points and curls and forked clusters. The fine 
black window frames of the high slender windows 
with the heavy green curtains, burst into a frenzy of 
iron in the tiny balconies which clustered the foot of 
each window. The grey facade of the house, pat- 
terned up above by the bold square blackened win- 
dows that threw back flashes of fire from the setting 
sun, blinked under the lead roof which covered the 
whole like a coffer, from the edge of which a row 
of stone gargoyles grinned down with tongues out- 
stretched. 

But it was the door which held me after I had 
pulled the tongue of polished brass from the iron 
throat of a grinning kindly devil. It was a great slab 
of black oak with the dragons, which I suppose gave 


242 


PASSION 


the house its name, chasing one another out of the 
deep oak. I could not take my eyes from these brutes, 
which wolfed and mouthed silently, bringing back the 
dragons in Mandrill’s room — but these were a different 
breed — more sullen. They were dull-eyed devils. 

“Come away,” said Miss Ella, “come away! . . . 
I’m frightened, I tell you. I’ve been here before.” 

I am always ashamed to think of how I spoke to 
her in my eagerness to know something of the house 
with the dragons on the door. She stood there in her 
poor black, cowed, abashed. 

It was too late to go away. I swear I had not seen 
the door open, but the shadows of the September after- 
noon lay so curiously across it. And I was excited. 
The house was exciting. 

The white face with the powdered head stood there 
in the frame of the door as though it had come through 
the wood. Only the head, for the smooth black uni- 
form, with the looped black shoulder-cord, was almost 
invisible against the background. 

“Will you please to come this way, Sir.” The head 
was deferential and prescient. 

We were standing, isolated, in the great square of 
the hall, with the high black oak panels and the inlaid 
oak floor which threw back sullenly the clock with the 
face of silvered steel before which stood a life-size 
figure of Death, his scythe swinging, swinging in his 
hands. It was the pendulum. There was an inscrip- 
tion tortured on the face of the clock. I read it with 
difficulty: “The Passion of the Hours.” 

“The Passion of the Hours.” It came like the beat 
of something in my heart . . . and then the night at 
the Grand Mogul came before me . . . the passion of 
the hours. 


THE HOUSE IN DRAGON SQUARE 243 

But the man had left us, sitting on two of the high- 
backed oak chairs. 

“Come . . . come away . . whispered Miss Ella 
from where she sat in the shadows of the high corner 
window through which slanted a ray of the dying sun. 
The leaves patterned the floor, which trembled and 
waved in an ecstasy. She was looking at something 
across the room — staring out of hex' white face in 
the way she sometimes had. 

The iron men around the walls stood on guard and 
glowered at us emptily. The two blue dragon-dogs in 
porcelain glared at us, their scarlet tongues standing 
out against their lion chops. They were porcelain, only 
porcelain, I knew that, with something about them 
ridiculous in a frantic way; but I saw the white teeth 
against the blue manes and the scarlet tongues that 
licked themselves upwards. And something shook me. 
It was the silence of the place, perhaps. 

There was a trembling. Death had stopped in his 
swing as though to listen: and from somewhere be- 
hind him there came seven strokes that reverberated 
through the place ; and in the tremblement there stood 
the man with the white face. 

He took us through the heavy curtains in the corner 
and along a passage, wax lighted, and so up the stair- 
case that dwarfed even that of Fear Street. Our feet 
sank noiseless in the pile carpet as we walked past a 
man in chain armour on the first landing — a queer 
little squat man, with a weapon I had never seen be- 
fore — a pole-handled scythe-like arrangement and a 
sword. I peeped at him as I passed — peeped for one 
of the socket-faces of the hall below and met . . . two 
beady eyes looking at me coldly; fiercely, out of a 
yellow, thinly bearded face. Of course, it was only 


244 


PASSION 


a wax face or a wooden face, but for the moment it 
halted me. It looked so vicious and cold and human. 
And I was angry with Miss Ella, who was obviously 
frightened. Then I discovered that it was I who was 
afraid. 

On the next landing a slit-eyed joss awaited us — a 
little scented fire burning before it. The joss looked 
like the man with the face, the same almond eyes and 
long scanty moustache — but it squatted on its haunches 
and held its little yellow hands with the long nails on 
its hips, the thumbs behind, and it laughed or grinned, 
I could not say which — grinned through the tremble- 
ment of the incense as it rose, filling the place with its 
heaviness. 

Strange things watched us from recesses, formless 
things from which I got my eyes away; but I could 
feel them staring at us even though I refused stead- 
fastly to look at them and held my eyes to the black 
silk stockings and shorts of the man with the white 
face. Absurd as it sounds, I was afraid of them 
mastering me — or of crying out — or something. 

I was dazzled, daunted in a way by the glow of the 
massive wax candelabra that hung from the centre 
of the great room with the green curtains that were 
drawn close before the windows, and by the scent of 
ambergris in the heavy air. The place was putting 
a spell on me: and I was impatient of this as I was 
impatient of all that puzzled or hazed. I turned 
sharply to ask where Madame Angelica was, but the 
man with the white face had disappeared. 

This thing, these things, were clogging me, cowing 
me. Miss Ella was nervous and that made me angry 
too. I would not be mastered by all this joss and 
Death business. And wax candles. The candles 


THE HOUSE IN DRAGON SQUARE 245 

especially irritated me. There was something in the 
place which irritated me altogether — something living 
... a thing . . . that was it. Dragon House was not 
a house, but a thing — a thing with a personality, im- 
manent. There were no josses here, however. It was 
a severe black panelled room, with solid oak furniture, 
the only patch of colour being the dark green curtains. 

“Where is the old lady?” I asked impatiently to 
Miss Ella. 

“ ‘Old’ — ‘old’ — oh fie for shame ! Mr. Tempest. 
Nothing grows old in the Dragon House. The Dragon 
House is eternal.” 

And a little figure was curtseying to us, the nodding 
curls hanging squarely to the neck, bobbing over the 
flowered crinoline, the cheeks delicately flushed. But 
there was a tremble in the curtsey — or I thought there 
was. 

The veins on the hands stood out more strongly than 
ever, as Madame Angelica, who I suppose had been sit- 
ting in some out of the way corner, watching our dis- 
comfiture, set her long pointed nails on the black of 
Miss Ella’s sleeve, the emeralds gleaming sullen in the 
candlelight. Miss Ella looked helpless into those queer 
strong eyes as a squirrel might look at a snake, only 
that Madame Angelica looked anything rather than 
a snake, and the old lady to my surprise had slipped 
the hand up and round the girl’s neck and had kissed 
her lightly on her forehead, her nose hooking at her. 
I thought Miss Ella shuddered, and there was some- 
thing that angered me about that kiss. If I had not 
after a fashion liked the little old lady, I might have 
shown it. But she obviously was fond of the girl. 

“You’ve come to learn my secret,” she said, smiling 


246 


PASSION 


to me. "And so you shall. But it is not learnt in an 
afternoon. You must come many times/’ 

Whilst she spoke, the door opened, the man with 
the white face appeared, and now I could see him 
plainer — a lan tern- jawed fellow with something sadly 
pervading about him. 

"You are served, my lady,” he said. So Madame 
Angelica was something more than a madame. Miss 
Ella had told me she was a countess in her own right. 

After she herself had removed Miss Ella’s hat and 
little black jacket, she led us through another length 
of candle-lighted corridor to a little octagonal room 
with a polished mahogany table bare of cloth, sheening 
in the middle under the inevitable wax candles which 
lighted the table, each light reflected in the depths of 
the mahogany, which bore in the centre a great glass 
bowl of dead-white roses. The roses, the polished 
plate, the seven-branched candlesticks, the service of 
flowered china, the cut of red salmon — all were re- 
flected faithfully in the depths of the wood. 

The little room, like the other, was severe and plain, 
only very beautiful with the golden glow against the 
black of the mahogany and the panelling of the walls, 
which here went to the ceiling. 

I cannot remember what we had. I only know that 
our little hostess sent the white faced man away and 
served us herself from a side table, toddling backwards 
and forwards daintily as might a doll. Only the soup, 
a thin Julienne, was hot. But I think we had on the 
table everything from lake and sea and forest. 

She was tact itself, putting the right knife and fork 
into Miss Ella’s hand with a pretty affectation of 
making her eat. She began to speak — that wonderful 
speech which smoothed all things out . . . she had 


THE HOUSE IN DRAGON SQUARE 247 

us at our ease before the soup was over, had smoothed 
away my irritation, and when we got to the fish Miss 
Ella was no longer watching her in that puzzled 
strained way, but, her lips parted, was forgetting to 
eat, until Madame Angelica shook her curls at her 
and, as she said, “brought her back to her senses.” 
Yet, even then, I could not forget those hands that 
served us — the pointed hands with the indigo veins — 
the big emeralds striking dull flashes from the depths 
of the mahogany. 

She filled Miss Ella’s glass again and again — it was 
some wine the colour of a pigeon’s eye, a wine that 
gleamed softly under the lights. But my old prejudice 
against alcohol had never left me. It was a relic of 
my hell-fire days, I suppose. Our hostess, whom I 
noticed only took water, at least highly approved it : 

“Quite right, Mr. Tempest. Alcohol is not for you. 
Only the very strong and the very weak can take 
alcohol. The secret of power is the secret of self- 
control — and alcohol weakens that, something your 
Mr. Mandrill has learnt — the thing that makes him a 
fanatical teetotaler. . . . “Not always, my dear,” she 
said, glancing at Miss Ella . . . “what is one woman’s 
meat is another man’s poison, so sip your wine in 
peace. ... You have learnt part of my secret — the 
secret of beauty and of power. 

“Now you shall come and see my beautiful dragons,” 
she said as we finished our green ices, and laughed I 
thought a shade malicious. 

The little figure rose, and taking us through a door 
in the oak panelling led us down the soundless corri- 
dors lit by the candles which seemed the only light of 
the house, along the silent stretches of which we 
passed here a shrine lighted to some unknown god that 


248 


PASSION 


squatted in the shadow behind — there the head of a 
grinning Asiatic — and once the white face of a girl 
which smiled wanly at us from its velvet background. 
Madame Angelica nodded at her intimately: “She 
died of love,” she said smiling and glanced at Miss 
Ella. “That was the death mask that was taken when 
they brought her from the water.” 

The face was still dripping. 

She nodded familiarly at some of these Things as 
we passed them, talking to them as though they were 
alive. She spoke of them as persons, and once patted 
the polished face of a little grinning ebony negro who 
seemed to be laughing at some secret joke; the joke 
of the joss on the stairs: “Little Abdullah,” she said 
caressingly : “Little Abdullah with his round little black 
face. He came from an East Indiaman who lived in 
the Dragon House a century ago.” 

After many turnings and twistings, in which I lost 
all sense of direction, we dropped down a curve of 
half a dozen steps, and our guide stopping before a 
door at the bottom had picked a tiny key from her 
chatelaine which she fitted, throwing the door open as 
she said — and I could feel her smiling softly in the 
shadow: “This is my chamber of beauty, where we 
shall have our coffee.” 

It was a queerly irregular room, which seemed to 
disappear round the corner, a room which at first sight 
filled the eye with a mass of colour, tawns and blues 
and a murk of crimson, with the gleam of gold thread 
from the walls. The room, like so much in the house, 
was disturbing — in a way alarming. The gold and 
blues of the mosaic floor blended very beautifully, 
here, with a rug of crimson or a square of Phrygian 
purple, only there to be broken up by the blue and 


THE HOUSE IN DRAGON SQUARE 249 

white stripes of the Navahoe blankets that hung on 
the walls. No sooner had the eye rested upon the 
Persian tapestries of the high wall to the left and the 
stained glass of the single high window, than it was 
broken again by the rigid mathematical arabesque of 
the inlaid ceiling that tortured itself at the edges into 
a tangle of curve that brought to mind the ironwork 
before the house. There was something of the chapel 
about the place with its incense and its colours of age, 
but a chapel desecrated to the service of the bizarre. 
But it was not only that the place was bizarre — it 
was something else in it that left me uneasy, disturbed 
— the presence of something. 

And then I saw them. 

Out of the mass of colour and the startling dis- 
turbance of the changes, from the ottomans and 
Turkish and Indian cushions that strewed the floor, 
the mass in which my eye had first lost itself, the 
inhabitants of the place came to me — stole at me from 
their resting-places and shrines. 

It was after my eye had turned to a sort of high 
altar under the window with the seven tiny censored 
lights glimmering before it, that I felt something loll- 
ing, staring, at me. 

It was a great flatulent Buddha, or Buddhist priest 
— that was how I thought of it at least — a horrible 
priest who clasped his incredible bellies with the two 
tiny hands that lost themselves in their folds as they 
broke from the sack dress that opened to the navel 
showing the coarse black hairs that streamed his body, 
hairs that sprouted from his nose and ears. And his 
face — the face was not unfamiliar. 

And then it came to me. It was the face of the 
glaucous man at the Grand Mogul. And like those 


250 


PASSION 


other things he was laughing, laughing at the great 
joke. How he laughed, his tongue jeering from the 
bestial hole of his lips. He was laughing, laughing 
. . . and Madame Angelica, who had stood watching 
our astonishment in her gloating way, was laughing 
too. 

“Another of my priests,” she said. “I like 
priests. . . .” 

It was then I saw that the place was peopled, in- 
stinct with all kinds of beings — beings in ebony and 
ivory — crystal and jade — in porcelain and unknown 
woods — figures which squatted in little shrines before 
which burned the swinging, swimming lights that filled 
the room with their heavy scent: figures that clung to 
the tapestry, that hung high on the walls, that sat 
solemnly crouched on little throne-like tables, nodding, 
winking, clutching, chuckling at us : all laughing at the 
great secret. 

Here were fat priests — Oriental priests, Christian 
priests — priests that were the blood relations of the 
Buddha on the high altar: there were lean cowled 
priests with death-heads that laughed through the 
hollows of the high cheek-bones — tonsured priests — 
bearded priests — shaven priests — priests that winked 
and blinked and nudged. Amongst them twisted and 
teased and turned ivory devils, ebony devils, long red 
devils made from some stained wood — grinning devils, 
dancing devils, prancing devils. Ogling devils, jog- 
gling devils. On the other side were bevies of nymphs 
and satyrs that cozened and cuddled in a Saturnalia 
of ivory. And here were minute Japanese figures, 
real men and women, all chuckling at the great joke, 
and Infant Buddhas smiling yellowly at it. Here a 
sort of Japanese satyr, his forefingers drawing back 


THE HOUSE IN DRAGON SQUARE 251 

the corners of his almond eyes gouged and chuckled 
beastily. 

And standing over them, in the farthest corner, a 
great ape — the low forehead, the cunning of the eyes, 
incredible: the arching chest and twisted limbs — the 
prognathous jaw with the head thrown back and the 
yellow parted teeth showing the scarlet of the throat 
. . . dominating the whole in grim laughter. Instinc- 
tively I stepped back from the brute — he looked so 
menacing and alive . . . and there was something he 
brought back to me . . . someone. . . . 

“I call him Mandrill,” said the little old lady, who 
was all the time at our heels, watching, smiling, as 
she pointed at the ape: “the ugly genius of the place: 
the genius of power and passion.” 

And it was Mandrill, this thing — this great stuffed 
ape — the only thing there not of wood or stone. But 
I liked Mandrill . . . this . . . this thing was a 
caricature. 

From the depths of the cushioned chair where I lay 
back as I watched Madame Angelica, the dainty Dres- 
den china figure of that first meeting in Fear Street, 
making us coffee from a silver egg which swung over 
a blue flame that came and went invisible, I felt these 
things mouthing and leering and ogling. As she 
poured out the polished black liquid into our little 
chased silver cups, I caught sight of one great paunched 
priest, who was sticking his tongue in his cheek at 
Miss Ella. Tongues were sticking out of mouths — 
into faces — laughing at us. 

There was a sigh and something thudded softly on 
the floor. It was Miss Ella. 

“Poor thing, the place is too hot for her.” Madame 
Angelica had bent over her and placed a tiny green 


252 PASSION 

bottle to her nostrils. After a moment she opened her 

eyes: 

“It was the thing on the altar,” she said apologet- 
ically, fearfully. “It stared at me . . . and did some- 
thing,” she added lamely. “Pm all right now.” 

But Madame Angelica looked triumphant as with 
her little basilisk eyes who watched us, eagerly — espe- 
cially me — but coolly as though the place were not one 
great scream of the horrible. She watched us with 
joy: joy unholy. And for a moment I hated her; as 
I had hated her that day in Fear Street. 

“I love beauty, Mr. Tempest, as you know: there- 
fore I love art: and therefore the grotesque. Extremes 
meet. The man and woman who live for beauty only, 
often end in the grotesque.” She smiled one of those 
puzzling little gloating smiles, as though she knew the 
secret of the place. . . . “Look at old Mani up there,” 
and she pointed to the Buddha on the altar. “He who 
has squatted there for two centuries and for centuries 
unknown in the East — he understands what beauty is. 
There is passion in his grimace when you come to think 
of it. 

“Beauty and power and ugliness . . . and pain,” 
she added after a moment. “They are all one of the 
other. It is to the gods, my little gods of beauty and 
power and pain and ugliness, these graven images — 
but graven in the likeness of the Almighty — I burn 
incense; these acolytes of the god of beauty — the Un- 
known God — the thing eternal that stands behind all 
the passion of life.” 

“As it was in the beginning, is now and ever shall 
be,” mocked the strange little figure as she led us to 
a door at the other end of the house, which she un- 
locked and opened. 


THE HOUSE IN DRAGON SQUARE 253 

There came to my nostrils that scent of white 
moths. A click, and the place, flooded by some in- 
visible light, that seemed to come from under our feet 
through the floor of opaque glass inlaid with squares 
of polished jet, showed us a tiny room, the walls 
festooned in white silk. From the ceiling there bellied 
a canopy of the silk over the polished black and white 
opalescence of the floor, in the centre of which leant 
a coflin of some fine white wood, quilted and padded 
in rose silk, hanging near it lingerie of lace that 
frothed itself softly under the light-sheen in the 
silence. And as we waited, I thought there came a 
scream — a cry ... it was a girl’s voice. But Madame 
Angelica did not move and I believed it to be imagina- 
tion. For if it was a cry it was the only sound I had 
heard in that house. 

By the side of the coflin lay its cover, with a silver 
plate let into it. 

“Look,” she said challengingly: “look!” And I 
read: 

“Madame Angelica. 

Passed ” 

with a space for the date. 

“When I pass over,” she said, “I shall be laid in that 
and those ... as befits a Bride.” She pointed to the 
coffin and clothes with a crooked forefinger. 

“There is no death,” she said smiling ghastly under 
the lights, as though someone had contradicted her. 

“I am a regular Bluebeard . . . and I have other 
rooms, but you shall not see them to-night,” she said 
as she shut and locked the door of the room. 

As we went through the hall, Time was still swing- 


254 


PASSION 


in g his scythe, and as she pressed my hand so that I 
felt the imprint of the nails in my palm, she said: 

“ Whether you know it or not, Mr. Tempest, you 
have had your first lesson to-night in the road to 
power and” — she stopped a moment as she glanced 
towards the swinging figure — “in the passion of the 
hours. . . It was the inscription on the great clock. 

“And I never thought of little Albert,” said Miss 
Ella, brokenly, as we went down the white steps. “Not 
once.” She began to sob. 

“I hate her !” she said. “I hate her !” 


XXIV 


THE BLINDED GOD 

The Dragon House was a spur to jar me anew as 
to the meaning of the things and the people about me, 
and I think left me a trifle unsure as to whether little 
Albert had really plucked that thing out by the roots 
as I had believed. I could feel it, or the little Old 
Lady of the Curls, jogging at me, pricking me on. 
Like the uric-acid girl; the girl in the stained glass 
window ; the copper halfpenny ; Golgotha House ; little 
Albert ; and that first night in Piccadilly, it was, in the 
darkened chamber of my soul, a peephole upon life 
itself — a glimpse out upon unknown vistas, arousing 
once more the desire of my childhood, the desire to 
know the meaning of things. 

The house, or the things in it, were with me through 
the winter, walked by my side in the fogs of the 
Euston Road as under the brilliant lights of the 
Circus. But ... I was afraid to seek my answer in 
the House in the Square. My fear was stronger than 
my curiosity and had kept me away from there. As 
for Madame Angelica, she made no sign. 

I ... I knew at least what I wanted to know. I 
knew I wanted to know what I was doing on this 
earth — in the Cave — in Fear Street. I wanted to 
know from where I had come . . . but above all I 
wanted to know where I was going, a grey pamphlet 
255 


256 


PASSION 


entitled “Why? — Whence? — Whither ?” giving me no 
information whatever upon the subject. In my most 
depressed moments, and they were many in the cold 
and fogs of that winter, I never thought this the end. 
I wanted to know the meaning of Mandrill and Miss 
Ella, of Mrs. Clarence and Madame Angelica, of the 
Cave and, sometimes burning through all, of the 
House in the Square. I knew that if I could find out 
the secret of these things, I would find the secret of 
that thing of moonlight and damp earth . . . the 
secret of myself. 

I sought the secret in the streets and the fogs, in 
the faces of the people of the underworld as in those 
of my companions at Golgotha House. I sought it in 
the Bible as in the literature of the Rationalist Press 
Association, the latter of which left me convinced and 
disgusted. In my peregrinations after the meaning of 
things, I found myself successively in the City Temple, 
St. Paul’s Cathedral, a Baptist tabernacle, a Salvation 
Army barracks, a Methodist meeting-house, and finally 
in a State Church where a large vicar tried to patronise 
me in the name of religion with disastrous results. 

I turned inwards into my own heart, unlocking its 
secret chambers one by one, but in that castle of Blue- 
beard was affrighted at what I found. 

Finally I turned to Miss Ella. Miss Ella didn’t 
know; she only knew she hated Chapel-folk. Mauri 
may have had his own gods, though Mrs. S. said he 
was a frightful infidel with a brand-new western relig- 
ion to fit his clothes. Anyhow, he was too much of 
a graven image to ask. Mandrill, despite all his mili- 
tant Christianity — we were always hearing about him 
in the papers through those enthusiastic representatives 
of the muscular Christianity which had sprung up in 


THE BLINDED GOD 


257 


a night as a stalwart of the Church of Christ militant 
— obviously regarded the Almighty as a sort of 
adjunct to Big Business. Hawkling, like the rest of 
Golgotha House, and excepting The Jackal, who had 
some obscure religion of his own in which hell-fire 
played a prominent part, had no religion at all and, 
what was the same thing, no desire to know anything 
outside the Cave. Mandrill’s Big Business friends 
didn’t know, unless it was Nathan, who went to the 
Synagogue, and who, as I knew, never came to the 
City on Saturdays — for Jehovah was really his God, 
a Jehovah very like that of Mandrill, who entirely 
approved of his keeping the Saturday. . . . 

But Mrs. Clarence knew. 

Mrs. Clarence was much concerned about my soul 
— I was much concerned about it, myself. She saw a 
gaping hell awaiting me. And I liked this sweet- 
faced, dark-haired woman with the grey, slightly 
opening eyes, who, in the rare intervals of my seeing 
her, sort of mothered me. Her hell and heaven at 
least were definite, definite in this world of indefinite- 
ness where nobody knew why they existed, where they 
came from, or whither they were going. 

So I applied to Mrs. Clarence. 

From the beginning there were difficulties. This 
tumultuous thing with its vistas and complexities, its 
kaleidoscopic changes, its involutions and evolutions 
was seemingly a very simple thing indeed. It was a 
thing of primeval simplicity — a thing of life and death 
— of heaven and hell. 

It seemed there were “Inner” and “Outer” Friends. 
The latter were just inside the pearly gates in the 
opinion of some of the Elders, but, and here Mrs. 
Clarence set her lips in her sweet, sad, assured way, 


258 


PASSION 


“she was not of that opinion.” The “Inner” Friends 
took the Bible literally from cover to cover, rendering 
each comma and each semicolon their due as though 
it were the Talmud. 

She prayed with me, and, despite my growing 
scepticism, frightened me very much, especially when 
a tall, craggy elder with a goatee beard who material- 
ised from nowhere, prayed for me luridly after we 
had cleared away superfluous children from the table, 
sofa and chairs into the passage and even Big Reggie, 
who, sceptic inveterate, was past praying for. 

Here at least was conviction, conviction by the side 
of which even my grandmother’s convictions “paled,” 
literally, “their ineffectual fires.” And I think they 
would, for a time at least, have carried my distressed 
self with its desire to damn all or save all, into the 
one true fold, neck and crop, were it not for a ques- 
tion I asked Mr. Roger Tumlinson in the heart to 
heart conversation which followed upon our rising 
from our knees: 

“If I become a Friend, I ... I can write ... ?” 

“Write what?” he asked, uncompromising. 

“Write . . . well, write novels,” I blurted out. 
“Stories, at least,” I hastened to qualify. 

“ ‘Novels.’ ‘Stories.’ ‘Romances.’ Inventions of 
the devil. All inventions of the devil. Soul-snares!” 

They lost me. If their God were not an Artist, I 
had finished with them and Him, even if it landed me 
in hell-fire. 

For I had begun, vaguely and without power of 
concentration, to write, write about things and people, 
little immature sketches which I never finished, or 
rather, only on those rare occasions when I could not 
stop my pen. It was my way of communicating with 


THE BLINDED GOD 


259 


myself, of making a friend, of setting down the 
answers to the questions that poured in on me from 
the highways and byways of London — the questions 
that had first shown themselves in the Euston Road. 
I was not ashamed of them. Indeed, I had tried one 
of them — a story about the Grand Mogul — upon Miss 
Ella, who was very properly shocked when I put my 
hero into a cab with a woman of the town: when I 
very improperly despised her. 

I had dulled intervals of inaction or reaction. But 
my pen or brain would not let me rest. I had to try 
and write. The Cave, the streets, the people, were 
a forcing house. The time itself was force-ful. It 
was a time of nerves. Discussion was in the air. The 
world was in travail. Men and women felt that they 
were on the edge of event. Everyone was talking 
about “the survival of the fittest,” and Mandrill was 
at the head of a Society for Applied Darwinism, 
which advocated competition unrestricted in which, 
if I remember rightly, Maxims and Colts were if 
necessary to play their parts. People were beginning 
to talk about Socialism and Democracy. There were 
street-comer meetings everywhere: Hyde Park was 
booming. In the Churches, Dogma was in the break- 
ing up under assaults from within. The Rationalist 
Press Association was building a refuge for the 
dogmatists upon the shifting sands of “fact.” The 
pale face of Science was being beatified in a cold 
white flame soon to die down in the grey ashes of 
materialism. Everyone, everybody, was arguing. . . . 

There was a carroty vegetarian at the Cave who 
used to turn up in the mornings to the unedification 
of Old Pippin and Swinger with a copy of “The 
Herald of Health,” a seed cake, and a bunch of 


260 


PASSION 


bananas, the whole of which he proceeded to digest 
upon the altar of propaganda. He sat there like an 
accusing finger, silent, fanatical against the carnivora 
about him. I think he would have made me a vege- 
tarian if he could have hidden his face. But the man 
himself . . . nobody can get over the concrete. 

And there was a Socialist who had put “ideas” in 
my head. But he was long-haired and dreamy. I, 
dreamy, hated long hair. 

There were of course the others, who laughed at 
the two propagandists, entirely > amused. Sceptics 
clothed in the smooth garments of orthodoxy, who 
sneered at Socialism, and vegetarianism, and all 
“isms,” but who, as I, who watched them as narrowly 
as I watched everything at this time, very well knew, 
had no grip or bite or stay, like Old Pippin for 
instance, who I think had a strain of Scotch in him, 
and who called them “feckless loons.” They at any 
rate could not answer my questions about things, 
and whilst holding a watching brief upon the things 
eternal I more than ever concentrated upon the things 
temporal, which at least were plain to see in the rising 
passion of my life. If it was to be “the survival of 
the fittest” of which Mandrill was always talking, I 
was not going to be left in the mud — I would struggle 
up even if I had to put my feet upon their faces, and 
. . . “we all have to live.” 

So I got my head out of all this fanaticism and 
kept it out — with difficulty, putting my long enquiring 
nose to the grindstone — mastering after hours the 
books of Hawkling’s companies, to that gentleman’s 
apprehensive disgust, and even taking the “Five- 
Guinea Instalment” Secretarial course by stealth at 
the Cosmopolitan School, studying Buckley on the 


THE BLINDED GOD 


261 


Companies’ Acts and a nice little volume of a thou- 
sand odd pages, entitled “Company Precedents/’ by 
a gentleman of the name of Palmer. When I felt 
inclined to shy at the idiocies of the legal mind, I 
said to myself: .“This is the road — the rocky road 
to power.” And there was Mandrill, always before 
me, going from strength to strength, with the “Domi- 
nate or be Damned!” staring at me from the walls. 
I wasn’t going to be damned. I had a strong bent for 
salvation. 

I rather think I reverted to my prayers to the old 
Jehovah — to my old relationship with the God of 
Power with whom I had entered into a contract in my 
childish days. I know I brought prayer to bear — 
prayer to him or to some god — perhaps the Unknown 
God of Madame Angelica. It may have been coinci- 
dence, but this praying, or working of mine, began 
to be answered. Headingley, the man above me in 
the Prospectus Department, was providentially taken 
ill, and as I knew his work — I had been studying it 
and him through many weary months — Hawkling put 
me in his place temporarily and reluctantly. 

Poor Hawkling. He couldn’t help himself. I be- 
gan to be sorry for him. He felt my hot breath 
playing on his heels. He was “groggy,” was reeling 
in his tracks, ready for pulling down. But he had 
come more and more to rely on me, and I certainly 
had saved him many reprimands and perhaps his place. 

So I went on praying, and working. 

Then Headingley very considerately died. So I 
was permanised, and as I had found by experience 
that good fortune, like its first cousin misfortune, 
never came singly, Chance, that chance which worked 


262 


PASSION 


so blindly in the maze of Golgotha House, helped me 
once again soon after I had passed into my twenties. 

It all came from a forged share transfer, an over- 
heard telephone message, and my fierceness to seize 
my chance. The man above me, Machlen, a long- 
nosed sheer-headed Scotsman, who had arranged the 
whole thing to the fine point of nicety, had developed 
a secret passion for “picking the winner” — that is, 
the loser. At various and several times, a rotund 
gentleman in a white hat and side-whiskers with a 
sporting pair of glasses slung from his dust-coat, a 
little ferret of a man who was the aforesaid gentleman’s 
clerk, and other gentlemen of the sporting fraternity, 
had made their appearance outside the long counter 
to see Mr. Machlen, who would get up secretively, 
as though caught in the act, and take them out with 
him. 

Like his famous countryman, he discovered that 
“the best laid schemes of mice and men gang aft agley.” 
In the machinery of the Golden Quest transfer he 
had settled everything with Chance, except my over- 
heard telephone message. It was only a shadow of 
a hint, but I, keen eared and keen nosed, was sus- 
picious, trailed the thing and Mr. Machlen, and, as 
in duty bound, laid the whole thing before Hawkling, 
the Secretary of the company. Hawkling brightened 
up. This meant a further lease of life for him, and 
very fussy and important, he laid the matter before 
Mandrill. 

Mandrill was furious and expansive. He hated 
dishonesty . . . inside the Cave. It was the unfor- 
givable sin — treason to the Cave and to him! If 
Hawkling had said that Machlen had murdered the 
transferor, who happened to be Nathan, Mandrill 


THE BLINDED GOD 


263 


would not have turned a hair — but forgery — treason ! 
He wanted to know all about it. 

Unfortunately in his eager seizing of a chance to 
prolong his life in the Cave Hawkling had told Man- 
drill that he had discovered the forgery. Mandrill, 
who generally unsuspicious in his big way, was the 
most ruthless hunting animal when on a trail, looked 
at Hawkling, I suppose, and having estimated him 
pretty well, saw that his story was a lie. Then I 
came in. 

I came in to find the skin on Mandrill’s forehead 
twitching ominously, and Hawkling in an agony — 
not of remorse, but of fear, casting an appealing look 
at me, something that softened me in a moment, for 
he had always been kind to me in his own bewildered 
snappy way, and there was the wife and children up 
Paddington way. 

But Mandrill was . . . Mandrill. He hated the 
law, which to him was only a protection for inefficiency 
— so he would not hand Machlen over to the police, 
but he gave him five minutes to disappear. He ’phoned 
down to Mr. Crosbill to send up a cheque for a month’s 
wages for Hawkling, and told him to go. 

I could not stand it. It was too much for me. So 
I said: “But my finding that out was a bit of luck 
— sheer blind luck.” 

“ ‘Luck !’ ” said Mandrill. “ ‘Luck !’ I believe in 
luck — and lucky men. I like to have lucky men about 
me. Luck is blind, but there is something, Fate, be- 
hind her that guides her finger. And Hawkling’s 
ineffective.” 

We all knew Mandrill’s superstitions. He would 
not have a cross-eyed employee about him even. There 
was no use appealing here. It was the appeal to 


264 


PASSION 


Caesar, and yet Hawkling in that supreme moment 
developed something heroic. There was an “ Ave y 
Ccesar! morituri te salutant ” about him as he turned 
to Mandrill. 

“I have served you, Sir, too well. The Cave has 
had the best fifteen years of my life. It has sucked 
me out, and I am finished — done. But give Tempest 
my place. He knows the work, and has done the 
work better than I. He’s young. He’s beginning. 
Give him a chance. I’m . . . I’m done,” he added 
half under his breath and went out. He looked 
finished. Knocked out. 

Something danced before my eyes. I saw my 
chance, and even my pity, my gratitude to Hawkling, 
went down before the lust to succeed. I would not 
be blinded. 

Mandrill looked at me: 

“Tempest,” he said in his abrupt way as he stood 
arching the bearskin, “you will take Machlen’s place. 
What are you getting?” 

“Two pounds a week, Sir,” I replied, a-tremble. 

“You shall have three pounds. Tell Mr. Crosbill,” 
he said. 

Something danced again before my eyes. And, as 
always, my ideas rose under the stimulus. I had the 
Big Idea. 

“I don’t want Machlen’s place,” I said as quietly as 
I could. 

Mandrill looked at me, knitting his furry eyebrows 
over those heavy frontal bones. 

“Don’t want it. What do you want?” 

“I want Mr. Hawkling’s,” I said. 

“Why?” It came from him, curt, short. I knew 
I had to make good or go under. But I was not 


THE BLINDED GOD 265 

afraid — if he had been Madame Angelica's ape I 
wouldn't have been afraid of him in that moment. 

“Because I can do his work. I have done it." 

“I believe you," said the great man, simply. 

“You will take Hawkling’s companies from now. 
Your salary will be the same as at present — two 
pounds. That is all." 

I went out, my brain dancing. But £2 a week. And 
Hawkling was getting at least £7. Well, it was Man- 
drill’s way. That was all. But I was going to make 
good. I walked on air. 

The hum of the central office came to me like a 
swelling diapason as I passed through to Hawkling's 
room. I looked at The Jackal's red eyes; at Old 
Pippin ; at the clerks, the twenty-five and thirty shilling 
a weekers in the Prospectus Department, and I reeled. 

I was dizzy-— dizzy with power. 


XXV 


THE BIG IDEA 

That first taste of power in the mouth was the sweet- 
est sensation I had experienced. There was something 
acid in it too — something whetting. It put me on a 
razor-edge. 

I did not sleep much that night in Fear Street, and 
when I slept I dreamt, taking, despite Scripture, a 
cubit to my stature at the wish — growing until I 
levelled, then towered, Mandrill. Then I woke up. 
For the moment, I believed that everything was a 
dream. 

But the blinded messenger, Barclay, who sat 
crouched on his stool peering through the lighthouses 
of his glasses, conveyed something insensibly deferen- 
tial into his greeting. The brass-bound commission- 
aires, who had a very nicely graded series of saluta- 
tions, had a new salutation for me as I passed through 
the swing-doors in Golgotha Place. And there on the 
indicator under “Prospectus Department, Ground 
Floor,” where Hawkling’s name had stood, was newly 
blazoned: “Jo * 111 Tempest, Secretary,” and under- 
neath, the string of companies, most of them “dead- 
uns,” as we jcalled them, a brave show. 

Nobody envied me. Somebody said I was the 
youngest Secretary in the City. Somebody else dis- 
covered that “Tempest had always been a good fellow.” 

266 


THE BIG IDEA 


267 


In Golgotha House, if you could knock out the other 
man, why, good luck to you! They took their defeats 
like sportsmen, with the sportsman’s philosophy of 
self : “it might be your turn next.” There was always 
a sort of “Ave, Caesar!” about those who fell in the 
arena. For they all admired Mandrill and loved him, 
remotely, as one loves a god, or the thing in whose 
hands lies the power to make or unmake. If the 
great game, the game of Big Business, was to be 
played at all, this spirit was necessary. It was the 
condition of the game. 

Even thus early the crown weighed heavy on me. 
It was the old crown — the crown of gold. I would 
never lend or borrow money and I had to keep up 
a £7 a week appearance on £2. It was Mandrill’s 
way to try a man out — to intensify the struggle in 
which he believed. I had had a hellish time of it as 
a clerk, with all kinds of ignoble makeshifts despite 
more than my share of guineas for ideas, and now it 
seemed that the struggle was to continue. I had to 
attend my Board Meetings frock-coated — I had to be 
“smart.” And the frock-coat meant a silk hat, and 
the silk-hat, as I found, a new pair of suede gloves, 
and these last a new stick . . . and other things. 

How did Swinger, that boiled fish young fellow 
with a passion for cigarette chewing, whom I half 
suspected knew more of the Golden Quest transfer 
than he ought — how did he do it ? His trousers were 
a marvel of symmetry — his patents, which he treated 
each day with M. de Guiche’s famous varnish, a 
dazzling reproach to shabbiness, whilst he burst suc- 
cessively into an eruption of extraordinary ties rang- 
ing from scarlatina to yellow fever. He had ambitions 
also, as I knew, and w^s already looking at my frayed 


268 1 PASSION 

heels like a cur that meditates attack. But he could 
not pull me down. I knew that. And in the mean- 
time as a share-transfer clerk he had to do my bidding 
whilst I kept my eye on him. 

Metaphorically speaking, I threw myself upon Mr. 
Abraham’s bosom in the Lower Marsh. It was partly 
Hibernian and consequently not unreceptive. I showed 
him a letter addressed to me as Secretary in con- 
firmation of my story, and he advised me like a father 
and valet in one. The result was fair credit, and at 
my first Board Meeting, that of the Golden Quest, 
I astonished my directors and myself by appearing 
in a dark grey, silk fronted, frock-coat, cut delicately 
to my slender waist, unapproachable trousers, and half 
patents, trying not to look and feel like a tailor’s 
dummy, as to my discomfort I heard young Swinger 
confide to Old Pippin, who chuckled behind his scarlet 
blotches. 

But it was a non-committal chuckle. For Old 
Pippin had to prepare Balance Sheets and Profit and 
Loss Accounts for me, extract estimates, and, gener- 
ally speaking, bow himself at my feet. He even 
“mistered” me in a sly way, his slightly shaded 
deference clothing him as a garment. The Jackal 
alone peeped at me from his look-out with his red- 
rimmed eyes, indifferent, as though he waited to see 
the next “lifter” pull me down. The Jackal respected 
nobody except Mandrill. 

Smeeter grovelled — literally grovelled. I think he 
would have licked my patents if I had let him, and 
I was always finding his great sorrowful eyes, with 
the black circles round them, peering at me awesomely 
over the frosted portion of the door to my private 
room, for now I had a private room. In the early 


THE BIG IDEA 


269 


days he had jeered at everybody. But he was a 
different Smeeter now and under the influence of pink 
papers, tobacco smoke, and other things was curving 
over more and more. 

As for me, I wanted to show these people that I 
had not got swelled head, and suffered agonies in 
oscillating between patronage and humility. But after 
a bit, I found my level. 

My cup of triumph had however its drop of bitter- 
ness — Hawkling — who haunted me in a double sense. 
He was the ghost at the feast of success. 

He was having a bad time of it outside, despite his 
hair dye, and he turned up from time to time in 
steadily degenerating stages for “a bob,” and I am 
glad to think that for all my own financial difficulties 
I always found one for him, especially in those later 
stages when his hair was becoming mildewy as 
Swinger said, because he could not buy his usual hair 
dye, and later still when he began to moult. I quote 
Smeeter in an unusual reversion to his old spirits. 

I had my countrymen’s gift of “managing” people, 
but between the often bitter quarrels of the directors 
of my companies, and their attempt to collar me as 
a mouthpiece to Mandrill, it was not easy. Most of 
these men were “dummies,” men put on the Board by 
Mandrill and raked from the gutters of the city; and 
as “dummies” they feared me in a way and were al- 
ways trying to get interviews with the great man, it 
being part of my business to keep them at a distance, 
which I did with tact, and, I hope, courtesy. For I 
was sorry for these poor devils, and I made it a policy 
never to quarrel with anybody. 

We had another type whom we called “guinea-pigs.” 
These were broken down lords, including an earl; 


270 


PASSION 


army men ; professional men, etc. who lent their noble 
and professional names in return for ill-considered 
trifles in the shape of directors’ fees and in some 
cases at least for “the pickings” — that is, for a chance 
to be “in the know” and gamble on the Stock Ex- 
change — but all honestly, in the way of business — 
business which was itself a gamble. For at this time 
the peerage was being driven to all shifts and con- 
trivances: into marrying the daughters of American 
pork-packers and into the City. 

It was the first phase of the struggle to the death 
between the old and the new aristocracy — the aris- 
tocracy of blood and the plutocracy of money. As 
for Mandrill, he despised the aristocrat as only the 
plutocrat could. 

Many of these men scarcely knew more than to 
sign their names, but this mattered little, for few of 
the mines were “producing,” though there was a vast 
amount of scrip-signing, of share dealings, raising 
fresh capital, and always the eternal liquidations, re- 
constructions, and amalgamations: and so busy were 
we kept with all this non-productive work — non-pro- 
ductive so far as the shareholders were concerned — 
that I am persuaded the most of them never thought 
that a mine was supposed to produce mineral, but 
really imagined they were engaged in operations of 
vast import to society and were acting as “pillars of 
the state,” a favourite expression of the Earl of Why- 
burn, and who, to give him his due as an honest man, 
entirely believed it. 

This man was our picturesque Chairman. We al- 
ways shoved him on to companies which were “rocky” 
but which needed bolstering up and keeping going 
for Mandrill’s peculiar purposes. And very fine he 


THE BIG IDEA 


271 


looked as he sat on the raised dais at the Grand 
Orient on one of our field days, his tall, slightly droop- 
ing figure with the white hair parted picturesquely at 
the back and brushed forward over the ears, the fine 
aristocratic nose, and the delicate hand balancing the 
monocle with the heavy black ribbon. I have seen 
shareholders “out for blood” come in there like raging 
tigers, and having seen the Earl, go away with their 
tails between their legs, ashamed of themselves. 

I managed all these things at one and the same 
time like a conjurer; kept my clerks and bookkeepers 
on a string ; superintended the Prospectus Department ; 
juggled with lords and generals; and even placated 
the terrible Hookgorm, who, as I found, only wanted 
“standing up to” — doing it all through learning Man- 
drill’s lesson: to run things myself and leave all the 
detail work to others, for Mandrill would never have 
his cubs as he called them — we called them “lifters” 
— held back by petty detail work, something which 
had always angered him with Hawkling who, a 
groveller at heart, always tried to do a clerk’s work. 

I was getting self-reliance, keenness, hardness. My 
eyes shone greener. My frame was filling out under 
the influence of dumbbells and cold water, and I was 
now able to look at Mandrill just under his nose; for 
I had never quite lost that pride of the flesh of my 
boyhood. I was losing some of my softer emotions, 
some of my impulses, under my responsibilities. 

And with these that other thing was fading away, 
but with it my writing was fading away too. I had 
no time for it — no inclination — no time or inclination 
for anything but the game of Big Business. If this 
was the Game, I was going to play it to the end. But 


272 PASSION 

was it “the Game ?” Even now I could not stifle that 
question. 

Some months had run by before I had begun to 
sense the real advantages of my new position, which 
for the first time brought me in touch with Mandrill. 
“Touch gold!” they called it. 

He was now in the middle of a new, bigger scheme, 
something which involved certain preliminary amalga- 
mations in which my group of copper companies were 
concerned. One of Mandrill's principles in all these 
amalgamations, which were really the buying up of 
the mines not only inside, but outside, the Cave, which 
were in “Queer Street,” by one of the larger central 
companies, was not to part with what the City called 
“the ready” — i.e., cash, or at least in innocuous quanti- 
ties, and these preliminary operations involved a vast 
passing of shares. The mines bought over we paid 
for by shares in either other “dead-uns” or with a 
trifle of shares in the central company, which was al- 
ways Mandrill, who, incidentally, took care always 
to have a controlling interest where possible in his 
companies so that there was really nobody to oppose 
these deals but himself. 

In those instances where he himself did not actually 
hold a majority of the shares, his friends held them, 
and if not they, recalcitrant shareholders were as clay 
in his great hands — “kneading the dough” it was 
called in the Cave. As Mandrill himself said — “These 
people don't control copper — they control paper.” 

This new deal was the Constrictor Group, and like 
the other deals, as I was beginning to find out, was 
but a preliminary to something in the future — some- 
thing shadowy, colossal. Mandrill took care that 
some at least of the amalgamated companies were 


THE BIG IDEA 


273 


sound so as to leaven the lump — it would not do to 
have a group of “dead-uns.” There was a maze of 
figures, of which I could only grasp those under my 
immediate charge: the drawing up of prospectuses 
with violent headings: and advertisements in the 
“Daily Manipulator” and “Moneypots” as in the 
“Financial Tribune” and “£: s: d.” But all these 
strings passed into and were controlled by the master- 
brain behind. 

There was much coming and going. Vogel lolloped 
and croaked his way through the office, his eagle 
nose hooking itself from side to side as he passed. 
Nathan’s teeth showed themselves more dazzling under 
his dyed moustache like the good-humoured rat he 
was ; and there were always the big well-groomed men 
who pervaded the place. 

Group after group was floated off after the Con- 
strictor, until under the ministrations of the advertise- 
ments and the “nursing” of the markets, “the City,” 
that is the country, which was beginning to follow 
the Copper Man more and more, bit eagerly at and 
swallowed each successive flotation, and even before 
it was out, was nibbling for the Great Puma Copper 
Group, Limited, which we now began to prepare. 

It had been delayed through difficulties with the 
“Financial Tribune,” which was a sort of Caesar’s 
wife. There was also an old-fashioned firm of mining 
engineers, Bastable, Seamans & Co., who blind to 
their own interests as Mandrill told them, bluntly and 
unaccountably refused to change a “2” into a “4” in 
a report which they had made many years before upon 
the chief mine of the group. But Mandrill, who had 
now “centralised” most of the well-known engineers, 


274 PASSION 

was not particularly bothered. He simply left out 
their report. 

But it bothered me, this refusal. I had had to do 
a lot of Profit and Loss with my conscience, which 
was blurring in the twilight of the Cave, and old 
Bastable’s bluff refusal to do something against his 
conscience touched me. But everybody did it. It was 
legitimate business. Mr. Bastable could not say the 
mine was not a 4-oz. proposition. “A mine was a 
hole in the ground” and though there might be nothing 
in it there might be something; and “Business was 
Business.” But old Bastable left me troubled, never- 
theless, though it passed off in the rush of the Puma. 

This last group flotation was something new in the 
City — something huge, and Mandrill had prepared 
a strong Board with a sprinkling of lords and military 
men. I never knew how he got these men in the first 
instance, or why the little investor like the finance 
expert was always reassured by military and noble 
names, the owners of which could not possibly know 
anything about business. But get them he did and 
reassured they were. I am not sure that we were not 
in a way reassured ourselves. 

I know that we became so used to big names that 
we looked down upon anything under a Lord or a 
Major-General. We were shocking snobs — money 
snobs — and I really think in some vague way we also 
got to regard these men as genuine “guarantors of 
fair play and all that sort of thing, don’t you know,” 
as the Earl of Whyburn so often put it. Mandrill, it 
was said, had even approached a bishop, but with in- 
different results. I know he had talked to Nathan 
about the Chief Rabbi, but, in the words of Nathan, 
“there was nothing doing.” 


THE BIG IDEA 


275 


But Mandrill always had one “strong” man on each 
Board, who really ran the whole thing and his co- 
Directors by their aristocratic noses. And this man 
in one guise or another was Mandrill himself. 

It was in connection with the Puma, Mandrill, in 
some way of his own, made a discovery. He discovered 
that I had imagination. He was the first grown-up 
who had not sneered at the thing which had got me 
into so much trouble as a boy. He at least was not 
in the great conspiracy, and I nearly loved him for it. 

Having discovered it, in the apparently impetuous 
haphazard way that he had, he deputed me to draw 
up the prospectus of my own group of companies, 
forming one of the insets of the Puma Group Pros- 
pectus, which was really a sheaf of prospectuses in 
one. “I don’t want figures, Tempest,” he said. “Just 
put it down as though you were selling something and 
rub the gilt on the gingerbread thick — thick as you 
like!” 

I rubbed it on, but with the discretion and reserva- 
tion of what I suppose I may call the budding artist, 
I ignored — I was an iconoclast with contempt for 
tradition — all the scores of prospectuses I had read 
from time to time, and dressed my shop-window as 
I liked, not with all the goods in the window like the 
other prospectuses, but with a hint of unknown treas- 
ures in the back parlour. 

The result was perturbating. It was an experiment. 
For the first time I was afraid to face Mandrill. But 
I took it up to the Den and watched over Mandrill’s 
slab of shoulder whilst he read it. 

He made no sign. Had I failed? 

Then he turned round and said: “You got home 


276 PASSION 

there. I always said you had the Big Idea.” That 
was all. 

But I knew I had “made good.” It was a cruel, 
full satisfaction. “To make good” with Mandrill was 
worth while. And there was the lust of the hunt, with 
the blood-scent strong in the nostrils. No, it wasn’t 
the money — the big money — to come. It was power; 
the lust to power ; perhaps the lust I had to do anything 
well. 

And “the Big Idea.” Mandrill had once said to me: 
“The difference between me and your uncle is that 
I think in millions and he in hundreds. Money comes 
to you if you think the right way about her. . . (He 
always talked of money as a woman.) 

So imagination played its part here as in all things 
— that imagination which they had laughed at in me 
as a boy — that imagination which Mandrill called the 
Big Idea. 

I had the Big Idea — it was in the group prospectus. 
The Cave knew that I had it. “It was Tempest who 
had drafted the new prospectus.” I was a marked 
man. Good luck to me ! 

We had a sort of democracy there; nobody kow- 
towed to or envied anybody else; we were all equal 
in a place where to-day’s office-boy might be to-mor- 
row’s Manager. Tempest had made good. Good luck 
to him ! My turn next ! 


XXVI 


PHANTASMAGORIA 

Madame Angelica in some way of her own had got 
to hear of my rise in life, though she had made no 
sign since that September evening of two years ago. 

I had once been to the house in the Square but heard 
from the man with the white face that she was away 
on the Continent on business. 

What her business was I knew no more than London 
itself, except that it was something more than that 
of a beauty specialist, and Miss Ella had once told 
me that she had old mansions like that in Dragon 
Square in Vienna and Budapesth, as in Paris and 
Berlin, and that her advice was sought by all sorts of 
people from royalty downwards. 

Now she sent me another of those great square 
enveloped notes of hers on the thick rough paper, in 
the angular hand, with that tenuous odour of white 
moths stealing from it: 

“Dear Mr. Tempest: You are on the road to power. 
You have learned your lesson well and perhaps my 
little gods have been working for you. For you know 
there is a God of Power. When are you coming for 
your next lesson? I shall be at home on Sunday, 
after 8. 

“You need not tell Miss Ella you are coming.” 

This last was written in a sort of postscript across' 
the corner. 


277 


278 


PASSION 


This note, like her other, was unsigned. It may 
have been imagination, but these first sweets of suc- 
cess in the Cave put me on edge to go again to the 
Dragon House. There seemed to be some impalpable 
connection between the Cave and Dragon Square — 
between Mandrill and Madame Angelica. Each place, 
each person, seemed a corollary of the other. The 
thing or things behind Golgotha House . . . Squid 
. . . Vogel . . . Nathan were the things behind the 
House in Dragon Square. Not that this came to me 
directly ... it showed itself only in the wish to see 
the House and hear once again Madame Angelica’s 
philosophy of beauty and power. 

Her postscript irritated me even as she sometimes 
did. It gave me the feeling I had had with the josses 
— that something was trying to master me. And I 
would not be mastered — either by Madame Angelica 
or by anything living. It was this obstinacy which I 
suppose made me tell Miss Ella I was going. 

It put her into one of her moods of explosive 
silence. She wanted to speak and could not. Then 
she said again and again. . . . "You must not go 
there . . . you must not ... I tell you I know. . . .” 
Then she was, as always, silent, as though someone 
were gagging her. . . . 

I asked her once more why she hated Madame 
Angelica and the Dragon House. 

"Every poor girl would hate — should hate her. . . . 
Because there are things there . . . there is a Thing 
there ... I tell you, Madame Angelica isn’t. . . .” 

"Isn’t what?” 

"Isn’t Madame Angelica, but something else. ...” 
She stopped, helpless, stupid. 


PHANTASMAGORIA 279 

Finally she succeeded in irritating me, this dumb 
girl. I would go. 

A Victoria stood before the door with a footman 
waiting, and as I looked, a tall woman, closely veiled, 
swept to the carriage. 

As I passed through the great hall, Death was 
swinging his scythe as though he had swung it since 
that September evening, stopping only to listen to the 
beat of the hours. But this time the place was more 
familiar. The joss on the stairs leered at me fa- 
miliarly. There seemed to be understanding in the 
beetling eyes of the little warrior. But the place was 
more enveloping — more immanent. 

As Madame Angelica received me, there was tri- 
umph, subtle triumph, in her voice as she pressed her 
nails into my hand. She looked with satisfaction 
scarcely perceptible upon my frock-coated figure. 

‘The outward and visible sign . . she smiled, 
and stopped. 

This time the man with the white face waited on 
us, keeping my plate full of the delicious meats and 
fruits. In the centre of the black mahogany instead 
of the bowl of white roses there piled a mass of 
orchids, great blotched fellows, who lolled at us with 
their velvety throats and tongues. I found my gaze 
returning to one brute — he was not a flower — that 
faced me; a crimson satyr who brought back to me 
the Japanese satyr with the drawn-up almond eyes; 
and I discovered when we went to the Room of the 
Altar for our coffee that before some of the josses 
orchids had been placed — white orchids dead and 
blind ; orchids spotted and pustuled ; orchids of a fine 
crimson that were cruel; saturnine orchids of the 
dusk; orchids glaucescent; orchids that glamoured; 


280 


PASSION 


orchids putrescent; orchids eruptive; orchids sightless 
that saw, voiceless that spoke, scentless that seemed to 
fill the air with the odours of disease. 

These flowers filled me with something — filled my 
inner eye — my very soul — as the incense of the place 
filled my nostrils, whilst the Old Lady of the Curls 
before me watched. 

It was after our coffee, which as before she made 
herself, that my hostess began to speak to me of my 
change in life, sitting there before the high altar of 
the Buddha. 

"Mani knows,” she said as she glanced at him. "For 
Mr. Tempest, in spite of what people say, the gods 
are not dead. They exist. To-day, as ever, they are 
fed by desire — by prayer. It was your desire for 
power, for success . . and then this extraordinary 
woman poured out to me and into me my life story. 
Quizzing and rallying and smiling as she did so, she 
revealed to me the secrets of my heart. She painted 
-with her nailed fingers the story of power. She told 
me that there were gods of power, laughing as she 
said it ; told me that there was a god, a supreme God 
of Power — a great Spirit omnipotent. But on her 
face there was always that tantalising quizzing smile, 
until I could not say what she really believed and 
what she did not. But she went on: 

"He is all-powerful and all-willing to hear the 
prayers of the faithful. He has heard Mandrill, who 
calls him the God of the Church of England; for he 
is a God with many names — many forms — and man- 
kind prays to him under all names and all religions. 
The Jews called him Jehovah — the Ammonites, Moloch 
— the Greeks, Zeus — the Romans, Jupiter — and men 
have called him Mammon and Venus and Eros, for 


PHANTASMAGORIA 


281 


he is the sexless god. But in all his forms, some of 
them terrible, some beautiful, he is the Power God — 
the Passion God — and all that stands behind Passion, 
whether of love or hate. He is the God Unknown, 
but mankind is coming to know him as the God of 
Gods who asks all but who gives all.” 

She laughed hardly, but it seemed to me there was 
conviction, fanaticism, behind her words. 

Her eye's shone and the delicate tints of her face 
had died out into two tiny spots that came hectic to 
her cheeks; the nose hooked more strongly from be- 
tween the red-green eyes, now set, the eyes that glit- 
tered in the bony skeleton of the face. The jaw 
came out. The very curls took their strength from 
her words and shook like wire springs. But always 
the hands, those terrible hands, clasped at the air, 
struck downwards into the flowered yellow silk of 
her dress, waved greedily under the tapestried walls 
and the mathematics of the ceiling, as she made her 
points in a philosophy which had become a prayer,, 
under the seven lights of the high altar and the yellow 
joss. 

And the Sunday evening and many Sunday evening! 
after I found my way to the House in the Square 
to hear the philosophy of the Old Lady of the Curls. 
Sometimes — often in the earlier days — she, the place, 
revolted me. Often I said when I left the house that 
I would never enter its doors again. But ever there 
came the prickling to go back to hear more, to learn 
more, of her god and her religion. 

“My god is a god of power — but also a god of 
pain,” she told me one of these evenings. “That, you 
shall learn. He is a god of beauty — and that you 


282 


PASSION 


shall learn, but last of all, for you are not strong 
enough to bear that lesson yet.” 

This Dragon House was haunting. One always 
seemed there to be on the edge of circumstance — things 
were happening behind its panels — eyes were watching 
— steps were following — and there came laughs and 
jeers and tears from the tapestries and the things in 
the hollows . . . and once again as on that day in 
the coffin-room, though I could not be sure, these 
silences had been translated, for I thought I heard a 
girl's laugh, or cry, from the other side of a door and 
once a cry of pain. But I never saw any woman in 
that house, or for that matter any human being, except 
Madame Angelica and the man with the white face. 

And now after each of these visits, that Thing which 
had left me under the stress of my work in the Cave 
began to rise again. The beast — or was it angel? — 
with which I wrestled, again began to cry inarticulate 
under my hand. Each visit I made to that house set 
the thing prickling in me. It went to bed with me. 
It rose with me. It only left me in Golgotha House 
where things were too fierce to admit dalliance. 

But of this thing I had never spoken to Madame 
Angelica, though I had spoken to her of many others, 
for in this one thing with her I had a great shyness — 
nor could I have expressed it. Yet it sometimes 
seemed to me that the Dragon House had the secret 
of this thing, the thing that was behind everything 
there, only that I knew also it was the thing behind 
my writing and behind all the things that were not 
of the House in the Square. 

And with the crying of the thing I became conscious 
only of two driving forces inside me. I was two 
highly conscious beings . . . one wanted satiety and 


PHANTASMAGORIA 


283 


devourings and through them the winning of eternal 
life or death — the other chastity and virtue and the 
gates of Paradise, the love of a woman "a little lower 
than the angels;” and both merged in some curious 
way into the same thing — that is only how I can put 
it — how I thought of it, if I did think. 

But under the ministrations, the promptings, the 
philosophy of Madame Angelica, it was defining itself. 

This thing dazed me. At one moment I wished to 
immolate myself ; to leave Fear Street and the Cave 
and the House in Dragon Square ; I even went back to 
the New Testament and prayed to my Friend, Jesus, 
a different, even more human Jesus now, under the in- 
fluence of Fear Street, for I changed my gods with 
my development. I wished to go out to the street 
corner or into Hyde Park and preach Him crucified 
. . . or . . . something. And there were those nights 
when the cold fear took me as in the early days in 
Fear Street, when I built cancers into my body, when 
I shivered under the -bedclothes — when each pain 
seemed approaching dissolution. When the Cave got 
on my nerves and I hated the place and all in it — and 
I could see Smeeter moving palely in the background, 
and read myself and my future in him . . . and then, 
behind, dominating, the great curving hands of Man- 
drill. 

There was the white cold of the fogs . . . the men 
as trees walking ... the Euston Road ... the 
movement and churning of the monster in whose belly 
I found myself. . . . And there were the spring nights 
when London was a foretaste of Paradise were it not 
for the promptings of that thing which took its 
strength as the sap rises in the trees. And then there 
was summer — high summer. 


284 


PASSION 


The August moon is hot. The August moon is red. 
The flowers of the London night are a-tremble in the 
passion of the hours. A boy is walking once again 
through the London streets, the human tides surging 
about him under the urge of the staring moon. He 
is wretched — lonely. There are laughing faces, smil- 
ing faces — faces that grin and snicker — cold faces — 
indifferent faces — but in all those faces which pass 
him in the shadow-play of the streets he cannot count 
one friend. Yet white teeth are smiling at him, red 
lips, that come to him out of the golden haze and the 
high white lights. The passion of the hours is rising, 
miasma-like, under the haze of the high golden moon. 

Something is stirring within him — something that 
whimpers inarticulate, like the cry of a newly born 
child; something that cries for recognition, for re- 
sponse — for . . . yes, for love. He is lonely — he is 
desperate — this boy-man — he is friendless and love- 
less. For he has proved the truth that “Fellowship is 
life — the absence of fellowship is death,” and there 
is no fellowship, no love, on these pavements — no 
fellowship save the fellowship of the flesh — no love 
save bought love, here, in the rising passion of the 
hours. 

And now this thing in his blood has changed, has 
changed into a snarling, struggling, brutish thing. 
And there is something which has to be satisfied — 
satiated. The tongue of this boy-man clings to his 
throat . . . and there comes the catch at the breath 
as this thing is incensed with the scents of humanity, 
of the streets, with the moist sweet odour from the 
paper shops which comes to his nostrils like that smell 
of damp earth. 


PHANTASMAGORIA 285 

For about him is the passion of the hours — the 
rising passion of life — and death. 

There is a blur before his eyes, a blur of arc-light 
and golden dust in the spinning circus — of painted 
cheeks and smiling parted lips and arching brows — 
of white biting teeth and tiny ears and the gleam of 
white flesh. But he fears these great creatures — these 
monstrous butterflies a-flutter under the August moon 
in the passion of the hours. 

The man is living again the story of the hours. 
Once again he is ashamed, hopeless, hoping, speaking 
to the girl, in black respectability, who takes him to 
her flat and treats him like a human being, not as a 
lover, showing him the photographs of her father and 
mother in pretty broken English — of a man from 
whom passion flies at approach, a man unmaddened, 
disillusioned, making a fool of himself, preaching at 
her like a converted madman in the hot summer night 
... of a little girl, demure, vicious, slank, who flits 
back across the memory-vision, to whom he gives 
money to take her out of the London tides, who takes 
his money and laughs at him ... or the Viennese, 
disgusted, bewildered, at someone who treats her as 
a friend and not as a male, showing him out with 
haughtiness insistent upon his giving her her “petit 
cadeau” for taking up her time — for time is money, 
and she has her lover Josef to consider; it is him she is 
going to marry — it is for him she is working ... or 
it is a foggy night again in Oxford Street and he is 
speaking to a girl, beautiful, with the soft brogue of 
his country, who runs from him shrieking into the fog 
when he speaks to her of Ireland . . . or it is the story 
of the ballet girl, pinched, respectable, who is keeping 
her mother and child on the money of love and is 


286 


PASSION 


respectably disgusted at the foreign woman opposite 
who has so many visitors every day. As for her, she 
is English. . . . 

Or it is the beasts of prey, the hunting women, 
prowling up and down under the arc lights — or the 
girls with the pale faces, shrinking ... it is a vision 
of horrors disarticulated, stripped of teeth and hair 
... of decent married women who have to add to 
their income ... it is the story of the old toothless 
women of the Road . . . it is the story of the wet 
of the streets ... of venal police ... of the yellow 
fog pregnant with adventure and beastliness . . . and 
through the phantasmagoria the driving, unsatisfied, 
deadly thing underneath — crime and beauty — vice and 
virtue — heaven and hell. 

What was this passion of mine, this passion, virginal, 
which I dared not satisfy, which I could not have 
satisfied had I dared, for it was not of the flesh? It 
was a vision of white limbs and red lips — of stranded 
hair and sidelong twisted eyes — of silks and sighs and 
sounds — of words half heard — of golden twilights 
and pits of blackness shot with forked tongues of 
flame — of things that were sickly and slippery — of 
gaping mouths and broken flesh — of summer evenings 
in heaven and Sabbaths in hell. It was a medley of 
desire and satiety — a Saturnalia of young witches with 
broomsticks and limned eyebrows — of putrid pits with 
limbs, white limbs, thrusting themselves upwards — of 
scents and smells — of the natural and the unnatural 
— of the clean and the unclean. It was a medley of 
everything — a sort of Paradise Lost and Paradise 
Regained. That was my passion. 


XXVII 


THE MAN WITH THE SPADE BEARD 

But all this did not prevent me from concentrating 
at the Cave. I was set on the road to fortune. I was 
not satisfied. I never was. In the first flush of tri- 
umph — perhaps, but afterwards there was dissatis- 
faction and that pringling to know, to set something 
down about it, to see it in black and white. 

And then there was Hawkling, who was always 
standing sentinel-like outside in the Place waiting for 
me or the others to borrow “a bob.” He was now in 
a really deplorable condition and the commissionaires 
had forbidden him entrance to the house itself. I had 
appealed to Mandrill to let me take him back as a clerk 
but had been met by a final “No. I won’t have in- 
efficiency here.” Outside, where also with my growing 
connections I had tried to get him a berth, I had been 
refused courteously but decisively. Nobody in the 
City would have one of Mandrill’s “discards.” To be 
fired from the Cave was the black mark. And Hawk- 
ling, more frowsy and blousy than ever, was beginning 
to drink. He once complained to me that there were 
plenty to offer him a drink, but none to offer him a 
meal. 

Still there was my triumph, tangible, each morning. 
Mandrill had clearly marked me out — I do not think 
he had ever really forgotten me because of Sherling- 
287 


288 


PASSION 


ham — and I was what Golgotha House called “on 
velvet.” Power — money — command — these were the 
sweets of life . . . and yet. . . . 

My brain could not rest, it churned like a mill- 
wheel. Baulked in my writing, which steadily grew 
more unsatisfactory and spasmodic, it turned to the 
Cave, where I spent my days and nights gluttonous 
for work. But my Big Idea came to me, as all my 
ideas came, by accident, some fourteen months after 
I had been installed as Secretary. 

It was brilliant enough, though simple. In the rush 
of the Puma and preceding flotations we had had a 
vast amount of advertising, and “nursing,” and “puff- 
ing,” so as to make the shares saleable and “create 
confidence.” But all this was still haphazard. All 
sorts of secretaries and managers had control of it. 
Nobody knew exactly what anybody else was doing 
and there was much overlapping. When the man 
from “Moneypots” appeared at the counter, and men 
from all sorts of moneypots were always standing like 
shadows behind the counter to see somebody about 
something, he would be seen now by one secretary, 
now by another. Sometimes it was discovered that 
the “consideration” had been paid twice over. The 
delicate questions of market “manipulation” could not 
be raised after they had been settled, and so time and 
money was wasted; something that became more and 
more serious with Caesar’s wives like the “Tribune,” 
of which there were an inconvenient number, refusing 
to surrender their virtue, and what was worse, with 
other papers surrendering their virtue to the wrong 
man, for every day we sensed a steadily increasing 
pull out there in the tides of finance — something or 
someone was working against us. A new financial 


THE MAN WITH THE SPADE BEARD 289 


paper with palatial offices had made its appearance: 
“The Octopus,” and this paper had even not feared 
to throw cold water on the Puma, in which it was 
helped by one or two others. “£: s: d” and the “Owl” 
had turned against us. Vogel croaked “Squid.” But 
the Puma had been floated triumphantly. 

We had a dictionary of terms delicately modulated 
to cover these transactions so as not to offend the 
“Moneypots” or “Manipulator” men or ourselves. 
We never said, and we would have been ashamed to 
say: “Here is a cheque for £500 if you will puff 
'Golden Quests’ or ‘Westington Wonders/ ” Money 
did pass in various ways, but certainly not by cheque. 
Sometimes we bought up vast quantities of copies of 
the paper “to post to our shareholders,” but more often 
to go into the cellars of the Cave for the wastepaper 
man. There was an etiquette about these things. 

I had seen all this manipulation, and like the others 
had come to regard it as an essential, though a regret- 
table essential, to Big Business. If the financial papers 
“knocked” a company it was doomed, and so we did 
what almost everybody else did in one shape or an- 
other, unless they had what Mandrill called “old 
fashioned” ideas. 

But why not do it scientifically? Why not put all 
this heterogeneous advertising and puffing and 
“arrangement” into one central department under the 
control of one man and call it openly “The Publicity 
Department?” 

This proposal of mine clinched me with Mandrill. 
“I always said you had THE BiG IDEA,” he boomed. 
He really made me feel very uncomfortable with his 
noise. 

With his usual impetuousness, he had swept out 


290 


PASSION 


two or three of our departments, packing the human 
and dead litter temporarily elsewhere. He gave me a 
staff of clerks and carte blanche. In the words of the 
Cave, he furnished me “regardless,” my private room 
being a little palace in its way with its Turkey carpet, 
its splendid oak furniture, American roll-top desks 
fitted with ingenious devices, and easy chairs and 
gigars for the reception of the Manipulators and the 
Moneypots. He broke out into an entirely new mass 
of mechanics. I had a row of electric buttons and at 
the other end a row of slaves obedient to my wish. 
Yet I am compelled to say that the man who really 
made the idea practicable, sketching in the details 
with a masterly hand, was Mandrill, and in the early 
stages at least it was he who clinched the final negotia- 
tions in these matters, though as usual I put in my 
days and evenings upon the new department, even 
surrendering my weekly game of football and my 
gymnasium — for I was now beginning to link up in 
a shy tentative way with my fellow-creatures, and I 
had to keep fit for my work. 

It was Mandrill who sent down the ideas in the 
rough. It was Mandrill who gave me the idea of 
seducing away Sinnett the advertising expert’s best 
man to take charge of the “graduated ad.” section, in 
which the country investor by a series of carefully 
worded sheets, “Manipulator” and “Moneybags” 
pars., was led up to the bait and hooked. It was 
Mandrill who sketched in blue pencil upon a great 
sheet of cartridge paper the division of the depart- 
ments . . . but it was I, my imagination getting to 
work, who originated the “non-personal” advertise- 
ment, which has now become so common — the type 
of advertisement which has been taken up in a modified 


THE MAN WITH THE SPADE BEARD 291 


form by seaside resorts, by Beer, and by Patent Medi- 
cine itself — the advertisement which coming from 
nowhere and therefore disinterested tells people what 
to buy but not where to buy it. And so there stood 
in great letters across the title page of the “Financial 
Budget” and the “Financial Tribune” the words: 

WHY DON’T YOU BUY COPPER NOW ? 

It was after this last that Mandrill had sprung me 
to £7 a week, in addition to my departmental profit, 
for I had turned Hawkling’s old department into a 
payer. He might have as easily made it £17, but I 
supposed he was seeing how I bore prosperity. It 
was always his way. He starved his clerks to keep 
them on edge, and rejected them when they lost it, 
as they often did. He worked out his “cubs” or 
“lifters” until he saw how they went: then he lifted 
them to dizzy heights, sometimes with disastrous con- 
sequences to their moral. There was that man Duke 
. . . they still talked about him in the Cave. A couple 
of pounds a week one day and the next £15 and then 
his thousands — with his motor cars and dinners and 
other things . . . and then extinction. When some- 
one said “Duke,” someone else always added, sen- 
tentious: “Up with the rocket and down with the 
stick . . but usually stopped at “Up with the 
rocket. . . Everyone knew what was meant. 

Vague ideas had run through my head of leaving 
Fear Street and living in a more aristocratic neighbor- 
hood, until I thought of Finsbury Park and forbore. 
I could no more leave Fear Street than I could leave 
my skin. It was part of me; though I left my little 
fourth-front back and moved into the third floor front 


292 


PASSION 


(furnished), out of which a queer old man, “the Eye- 
talian” the Fear Street Cockneys called him, had 
walked one night at 12 o’clock as was his custom and 
had never returned. . Nobody ever knew what had 
become of him. Even the landlord did not know his 
real name. It was one of London’s little incidents. 

Mrs. McWhirter, whose husband seemed to be do- 
ing more badly than usual, and who was in a condition 
of hissing which brought back to me an old enemy 
of my childhood, a gander, offered through Mrs. S., 
who came to me with a tear like milk in the sightless 
eye, “to do” for me. And very well she “did” too. 
Though I felt more than a little ashamed, and helpless, 
to see this beautiful woman, moving about my rooms 
silently, cleaning and dusting, and preparing my break- 
fast. She was very proud too, and would not take 
more than ten shillings a week from me: I wanted to 
make it fifteen, but she said the work wasn’t worth it, 
and I had much ado to make her take the ten shillings. 
Anyhow, it kept their home together, for Mrs. S. had 
told me they were weeks behind in their rent and the 
landlord had threatened to turn them out. 

My new circumstances brought to me revelations 
about human nature. In some way or other it had 
got about that an aunt of mine had died and that I 
was a millionaire. One lady I heard from my third 
front discussing entirely inaccurately in Anglo-Italian 
the exact number of millions which had been left me: 
“I tell-a you — two, three-a, four-a millions.” And 
her friend, London and sceptical: “Garn! wot are ye 
givin’ us. ’Im. Millions!” It was humiliating. I 
closed the window as silently as possible. 

On the whole however I could feel that my poor 
neighbors were pleased in the fine unselfish way that 


.the MAN WITH THE SPADE BEARD 293 

they had. For some occult reason I was popular in 
Fear Street, a popularity I am afraid coming partly 
through bought stickinesses for the little black-eyed, 
brown-faced children whose attention and whose 
mothers' attentions were sometimes embarrassing. 

Mr. Clarence, very spruce indeed, took an entirely 
early opportunity to call and congratulate me, winding 
up accidentally with a request for “a fiver until the be- 
ginning of next month, when my ship comes home.” 

I had so much money that I broke through my rule 
and lent it, though neither Mr. nor Mrs. Clarence 
were so tactless as to mention it at the beginning of 
the month or afterwards. Mrs. Considine Clarence, 
who was the most honest woman alive, had no head 
for money matters, which were run by her husband, 
and I discovered that the borrowing of money weighed 
lightly on her conscience: “We all have to live.” 

Miss Ella, on the other hand, stedfastly, even in- 
juriously, refused my offer of money. For Miss Ella 
had been in poor condition since little Albert's passing; 
she neglected herself, and once to my unspeakable 
sorrow, I found her drunk on the stairs, when I had 
carried her to her room. After that night she had 
avoided me rigorously: she refused to open the door 
when I knocked, and generally showed me she wanted 
to have nothing more to do with me. I was I fear 
too self-centred, too accustomed to being solitary, to 
mind much the desertion of friends, but I had come 
to like and respect this ordinary, shy girl, who was so 
independent and proud in her own way and who 
wouldn't borrow money from me. And there had 
been that night after the Grand Mogul for which I 
always felt in her debt and which gave her a kind of 
superiority over me. 


294 


PASSION 


Also, as I had found, there was one thing my suc- 
cess had not weakened, that was my old desire to be 
fared for by somebody — that imperious overwhelming 
need that sometimes passed into something else, into 
that thing of damp earth. I suppose I wanted to love 
and be beloved, though I never put it like that. 

I used to listen, wistfully, in the cold winter nights 
to her footsteps overhead echoing upon the hollow 
floors of Fear Street when she walked up and down, 
as she would for hours at a time; sometimes, more 
and more rarely, to other footsteps. Or I would hear 
her come up the stairs, sometimes with that queer 
uncertain step I had heard so often recently. I would 
hear the fumble at the lock, the opening, and some- 
times the banging of the door as though it were closed 
with an unsure hand. And on these nights there would 
be at once a creaking and a silence. The creaking was 
that of the great bed where I could see Miss Ella 
lying, dressed, heavy in her stupor. 

One January night, the night before my twenty- 
second birthday I remember it was, I lay in my bed 
reading. Outside the high windows the fog clung in 
a yellow pall against the glass from which I had 
drawn the curtains, showing everything reflected as 
in a yellow mirror. As I lay, I gave myself up to the 
fancies I saw in the flames which licked upwards on 
the windows and were damped out in the fog. I was 
hideously depressed in the silence of the house and 
street, for the pall had fallen on all life and everything 
was stilled. I know the fear came at me — that fear 
which my rapid lift and my work at Golgotha House 
had driven away for the time: the fear of this great 
intestinal London in which I was lost: fear of big 
business, of Mandrill: fear of my lost powers: fear 


THE MAN WITH THE SPADE BEARD 295 

that the Cave was swallowing me: fear that like my 
predecessor I should walk out one night and never be 
heard of again in the London fogs, or that I should 
die like a dog in the night without a friend to help 
me: without even Miss Ella. . . . 

The bed above me creaked. There was a soft 
double pad on the floor, and I heard a door open on 
the landing above. There was a scuttering — a flutter- 
ing of bare feet on the staircase and a pounding on 
my door — muffled — but urgent — so urgent. 

It went and came through the house like the beat 
of a muffled drum. I listened to it stupidly as though 
it did not concern me. Then it came to me that it was 
my door, and after springing out of bed I had pulled 
on a pair of trousers and run to open it. 

Miss Ella stood there much as she had stood the 
night little Albert had been taken ill. But now she 
was clothed in a fine muslin nightdress, one white 
shoulder showing where the flimsy fabric had been 
torn down, her great brown tresses hanging wildly 
about her. She swayed there under the flicker of the 
lamp from my inner room, swayed against the door 
post. She was trying to say something . . . then 
there broke from her lips a dry crackle of sound . . . 
“in my arms . . . my arms . . . my arms. . . .” 

I looked at her a moment and then had run upstairs 
barefooted as I was, passed through the door of the 
fourth front, where as usual a light was dimly burn- 
ing, and so into the bedroom which stood glaucous in 
the white-green glare of the incandescent light. 

Something lay in the great bed — something twisted 
out of the likeness of humanity, the bedclothes knotted 
around it inextricably. The old grey head, the spade 
beard, the short hollow nose ... I knew them. The 


296 


PASSION 


eyes, glazed, stared dully upwards at the incandescent 
which hissed itself in the whiteness. 

A little dog barked hardly in the stillness of the 
place — the little black poodle Miss Ella had bought 
after the passing of Albert Victor. 

Near by stood little Albert’s bed, with his toys in 
it. A great gollywog stared in glorious riot at the 
thing in the bed. The man’s clothes fell carelessly 
from a chair. 

Something whimpered. The face and white arms 
that stared out from between the crimson folds of the 
jcurtain might have been those of a ghost. It was 
Miss Ella, staring, staring, whilst she repeated me- 
chanically as she hung there . . . “in my arms . . . 
in my arms.” 

And then something gurgled in the silence, and as 
we looked, the thing in the bed relaxed and half turned 
over. 


There was an inquest at which Miss Ella and I gave 
evidence, and a verdict: angina pectoris. But after 
it Miss Ella did not return to Fear Street and she and 
I were never to meet again in this London that swal- 
lowed and digested all. She was lost in one of the 
city’s stomachs. 

But this thing was one of the first things that ever 
helped me to an understanding of that other thing 
that had been with me through the years. It was 
vague and formless, but it set something working in 
me — something that permeated it, making light the 
dark places. Perhaps it was the moonlight through 
the damp earth — shining down into that pit of white 
flesh. 

I tried to set this thing, like those other things, 


THE MAN WITH THE SPADE BEARD 297 


down in writing. For this thing like those others 
pricked me on again, set me tingling to record some- 
thing . . . but when I set it down it looked colourless. 
The thing itself, the thing that had really happened, 
was somewhere in my consciousness ... it was not 
in my manuscript. And I was glad, for in my lust to 
power I had felt uneasy. That thing and writing did 
not go together. 























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PART III 
THE WOMAN 



f 















XXVIII 


AASE WILDE 

Since that night of two years ago, Mandrill had been 
lifting up and across the firmament of stars, rushing 
comet-like athwart the commercial horizon, and I 
had been lifting with him ... a tail which tended 
more and more to define itself. 

At the time, I had been turned from the fight for 
power by that business of the Man with the Spade 
Beard. It had shaken me and resolved me once more 
into the fundaments of my being: it had defined the 
issues lying behind life and death: and it had defined 
that impelling, haunting thing of the past — defined it 
from the ghost. It was no longer a sort of horrific 
Boody Man of my childhood. 

And in the definition it had helped me to grapple 
with the thing as it materialised under my hands, for 
I discovered as I had discovered when a child, that 
it was the things of the dark places, invisible, brood- 
ing, of which one was afraid. Visibility, materialisa- 
tion, made them innocuous. And so I got this thing 
between my two hands at last and was strangling it. 
It moved under me . . . sometimes it broke free — but 
ever its struggles became fainter, the tide of its vitality 
ebbed, and as it ebbed it turned its strength into my 
work. 

That is to say, into the Cave, for my writing had 
become non-existent, and this sort of impression now 
301 


302 


PASSION 


got easily faint; and so I put my nose to the trail 
once more and forgot Miss Ella and the past. The 
fine edge of my criticisms began to dull; the impres- 
sions of Fear Street itself to fade under those vivid 
daily impressions of Golgotha House, which was the 
concrete. It was London, the Obliterator. 

Mandrill had taught me the lesson of fitness, the 
need of perfect physical health in the struggle of Big 
Business, and with the old passion of the body which 
had never died, I took my pleasure in the gymnasium 
and in outdoor exercise. I had even had the gloves 
on with Mandrill, who placed his own boxing instruc- 
tor at my disposal — one of those modern gladiators, 
slender, supple, reflective; with a body of springs and 
wires. But to Mandrill’s great disappointment, “the 
noble art” did not appeal to me . . . even here my 
worship of the body played its part and I could not 
conquer my repugnance to the inevitable accidents of 
fortune in “cabbage” ears and pulped noses. As ever, 
I hated mutilation. 

All this hard physical exercise had done much to 
give me “nerve” and tone, and those fits of depression 
came more seldom. But come they did at times, and 
I remember suffering agonies of apprehension after 
falling upon the end of one of the parallel bars at the 
gymnasium, believing that the dull gnawing pain which 
came at me day by day meant cancer, of which I had 
always been fearful. 

One evening in early September as I came back 
from the gymnasium, which lay a couple of streets 
away, I was particularly depressed, for the pain low 
down on the right side of the stomach had come back 
as I worked on the horizontal bar. As I passed up the 
steps of the Fear Street house, I found a little boy 


AASE WILDE 


303 


polishing away at a brass plate which had been put up 
that day. I stood and watched the top-heavy head 
as it swayed from side to side under the impulse of 
his exertions, like the hypertrophied heads of those 
babies which doctors preserve in spirits. As he stood 
back to survey his work, I read on the plate: “Dr. 
Aase Wilde/’ and in smaller letters: “4th Floor,” 
with directly under that a brass bell and the words 
“Night Bell.” 

The idea came to me quickly. I hated doctors . . . 
feared them rather, but I would go and consult this 
man and have the thing over. But the thing had 
stopped gnawing. Was it worth while? I wavered 
there, when the little boy turned round, catching sight 
of me. He was a quick boy that, and taking in the 
whole situation with a glance of his luminous eyes in 
a way which would have delighted Mandrill, he said, 
confidential, as though he had been expecting me, in 
a soft brogue like the southwest wind: “If it’s the 
doctor ye want, ye can go straight up now.” 

Mickey decided me. I would go straight up, and 
I did, knocking timidly at the door of the fourth floor 
front, Miss Ella’s old rooms. There was no reply, so 
I ventured softly to turn the handle and go in. 

I was puzzled beyond measure to see the figure of 
a tall girl standing in the centre window. She had 
her long, slender arms clasped loosely behind the 
delicate blouse of China silk in the way that I learned 
to know. The green of her close-fitting skirt sheathed 
her as she stood there looking out against the after- 
glow, the proud straight head held upon the rounded 
slender neck and rather high shoulders. Her hair of 
tawn framed her like an aureole, the gleam of the 
sun infiltrating through its tousled browns and reds, 


304 . 


PASSION 


bringing back something from the past as though I 
had seen her before. In the corner a skeleton stood 
grinning, frightening me very much. 

I supposed her to be a patient waiting for Dr. Wilde, 
and was about to go again when the click of the door 
brought the figure swinging on its hips towards me. 
The eyes, those eyes of reddish brown that seemed to 
smoulder in the head, with the quick lights coming 
and going in them, the little firm chin, all concentrated 
on me, the brows slightly knitting themselves over the 
strong, rather irregular nose. There was something 
finely strung, “nervous,” in the poise of the body. 

“I ... I beg your pardon,” I said, haltingly. The 
girl did not speak. She had a great capacity for 
silences as I was to find out. 

“I — I came to see Dr. Wilde,” I added lamely. “But 
I suppose he is engaged.” 

“No, I am not engaged. . . 

This was staggering. She had said “I.” 

“But I — I thought Aase” — I blushed hotly as I 
pronounced it, I am sure horribly — “I thought Aase 
was a man’s name.” 

“I am Dr. Aase Wilde,” the girl vouchsafed, smil- 
ing at my puzzlement. She uttered the name very 
beautifully, pronouncing the double “a” like a modu- 
lated “O.” “My mother was a Swede, my father an 
Englishman.” 

The thing in the* corner was laughing at me. The 
situation was impossible. . . . 

“You are not afraid of Jesper, I hope. He really 
has no business here, but he is a great friend of Mickey, 
who has been polishing him up.” 

Then the slender figure tautened, the firm rather 
full lips straightened themselves out, the brows had 


AASE WILDE 305 

relaxed, and it was as though I heard someone else 
speaking: 

“Do you wish to consult me?” 

If she had not said it exactly in that voice; if she 
had not looked precisely as she did; I would have 
run from the place. I felt like a young restive horse, 
about to shy, but the voice, the manner, soothed me, 
made it possible for me to speak, even though I had 
prejudices about lady-doctors, who to me were still 
rather fabulous and shocking. 

I blurted out that I had cancer, at which the smile 
crept back to the corners of the mouth, and again I 
was about to bolt. 

This girl of some twenty-three summers (I learned 
afterwards that beginning her medical studies at a 
very early age she had diplomatically concealed her 
age from the medical inquisitors, having just qualified) 
handled me as no human being had ever handled me 
before. There was something so gentle and sure and 
in a way “sexless” about her. She seemed to under- 
stand what I felt as I felt it . . . did not ask many 
questions, and conducted her examination as though 
she had been my mother instead of a girl in the early 
twenties, so that I forgot my blushes. 

As she spoke to me, and especially when I caught 
the scent of her hair, there came to me that feeling 
which I had sometimes had before with people, par- 
ticularly when I was a little child, that I had seen 
her before — that queer, friendly, shy feeling. The 
quick eyes that looked like “two burned holes in a 
blanket” as she once told me afterwards when I had 
blurted out an honest, clumsy compliment about them, 
the quick nervous gestures, the sureness of the fingers, 
the dainty sinuous figure, the flashes of understanding, 


306 


PASSION 


luminous — all these things I felt I had known some- 
how, somewhere, in time and space. And it came to 
me for a moment that I had seen her in a window as 
I had seen her to-day. Then it flashed down on me — 
she was the girl in the stained glass window. But 
that I put away the next moment as ridiculous, in a 
way repellent — these two women had nothing in com- 
mon. But that other girl also had had hair of 
tawn. . . . 

I wanted to tell her something of this feeling in 
my gratitude after she said that I had no cancer, but 
suffered from “nerves” — “this is the Age of Nerves.” 
she had interjected — only that she cold-douched 
me. . . . 

It was when I had looked at the skeleton in the 
corner and said, perhaps a trifle neurasthenically : 

“To think that we are like that!” 

To which she had replied, uncompromising, ironic: 

“But we aren’t!” 


XXIX 


THE PHILOSOPHY OF POWER 

The girl with the red hair, as I called her to myself, 
kept coming back to me in the weeks that followed. 
There was something irritating, something provoking, 
about her. At times I could not decide whether I 
liked or detested her, though I had no earthly right 
to do either. She was only “the lady-Doctor on the 
fourth front,” in the directory of Fear Street. She 
was a new incursion in my experience of womanhood, 
something I had not met nor even guessed at before. 
She was masterful, elusive, stimulating . . . yes, 
above all, stimulating . . . and with it, intensively 
feminine. And that “But we aren't!” of hers had 
stuck in my mind, as though it were barbed. It was 
a sort of challenge; and I am afraid, like other chal- 
lenging, pugnacious animals, I myself did not like 
being challenged. 

The Cave, however, soon erased this irritation or 
stimulation. I had power at last; was beginning to 
learn how to use it; felt more and more that I was 
marked out by destiny, that is, by Mandrill, to some- 
thing. I don't think I set before myself what this 
thing might be. I certainly had no vulgar ambition 
to be a second Mandrill, to whom I sometimes felt 
instinctive, almost uncontrollable irritation and opposi- 
tion, at least when I was not actually in contact with 
307 


308 


PASSION 


him. All that, I left in the insistent, immediate con- 
crete that was Golgotha House. 

It was a day of mid-winter. The frost stood 
crisped on the windows of the Cave as I went up to 
Mandrill’s room to see him about a scheme for inter- 
nationalising the activities of the “Shout” Depart- 
ment, our name for the Publicity Department, upon 
which I had been concentrating in private. Now I 
had the right of free entry to “the Den” when I liked. 

A fire roared on the iron dogs and Mandrill roared 
before the fire, as he straddled the white bearskin in 
his favourite position when declaiming. I caught the 
gleam of his yellow teeth with the head and nostrils 
thrown slightly back, the glow of the emerald that 
pushed itself from the arch of the chest. Something 
defined itself down under the lee of the shoulder. 

She was standing there, a little doll of a woman, 
looking up admiringly as the great man talked, behind 
her the fossil tiger, “Old Sabretooth,” snarling over 
her head with the teeth that curved themselves down- 
wards. Across the edge of the poke bonnet one eye 
glittered, stony, corresponding curiously to the green 
eyes of the man who was talking, talking. The little 
hands, mittened and jewelled, curved and uncurved 
themselves as she listened. It was the Old Lady of 
the Curls. 

I was not altogether surprised to see her there; 
more than once I had seen the big blacks driving up 
to or away from the house in Park Lane. And she 
had told me herself that she knew Mandrill. 

“You know Madame Angelica. . . .” The big man 
broke off. 

The little figure at his side was dipping, dipping to 
me *is though it were on wires. 


THE PHILOSOPHY OF POWER 309 


“I know she knows you/’ he went on. “Madame 
Angelica knows everybody in the world, I think . . . 
everybody. I have no secrets from Madame Angelica. 
I couldn’t if I would. ,, 

The little figure was smiling acknowledgment of 
the compliment. 

“As a matter of fact, we have been talking about 
you, Tempest,” he went on. “We are both agreed 
in thinking you lucky. The Shout Department is 
booming as a Shout Department should. You have 
the gift of managing men. . . .” 

“And we have decided that you shall join us on 
Olympus,” the old lady said smilingly, breaking her 
silence for the first time, as she gathered up her heavy 
ermine furs to go. And go she did, dipping again at 
the door until her crinolined dress stood around her 
on the red carpet like a flowered bell where it came 
below the edge of her furs. Mandrill himself showed 
her down, and I watched the giant hand her into the 
black brougham with the black horses and the discreet 
coachman and footman, which drove away down the 
Place. 

Mandrill came in, bringing with him the sting and 
bite of the December air. He strode across to the 
hearthrug and stood there a moment, his back to the 
fire. Then he swung round and laid his two great 
paws upon my shoulders. 

“Why, Tempest,” he said, “you can nearly look me 
square in the eyes. You are about the only man that 
ever could, and d’ye know, when I look into your 
eyes I seem to see in them the reflection of my own. 
You remind me of myself . . . only you’re different,” 
he added as though puzzled. He went on : 

“I took to you from the day your uncle brought 


310 


PASSION 


you to me here in my den. You were not afraid of 
me. I liked you for that. You came to me when I 
was on the threshold of big things, and in a way you 
have grown up with me as I grew. You have brought 
me luck. You were not afraid of Power or the Big 
Idea. You’ve not fallen down. You are a man of 
my own breed, after my own heart. 

“Now Pm going to trust you as myself.” 

My heart was beating under the great man’s praise. 
Mandrill did not often let himself go in that direction. 
I was flattered — immensely flattered. My angry, 
latent opposition to Mandrill and his methods van- 
ished under the sun of his words as they always did. 
The writing, the desire to express which had some- 
times seemed to set itself against Big Business, seemed 
remote as I looked into the eyes of this man. It 
seemed something ridiculous. And then, irrelevant, 
as I turned my eyes on to the logs that blazed on the 
hearth, I saw in the glowing embers a halo of tousled 
hair, two eyes of reddish-brown that looked at me, 
and a slender figure tautened itself against me. . . . 
But that too went at the next words: 

“You must leave the Publicity Department.” 

“Leave the Publicity Department. . . .” The words 
danced before me in the fire. And I with the idea of 
internationalising its activities simmering in my brain. 
I ventured to insert this. 

“We can talk about that later. You will leave the 
Publicity Department.” It came, abrupt. There was 
no appeal possible. I knew that. 

“For I want you near me in the thing that is coming. 
We will call you my private secretary — what you will. 
You shall have that room in there, and you had better 
leave Fear Street and £ome to Park Lane.” 


THE PHILOSOPHY OF POWER 311 


But that I would not. Mandrill was astonished at 
my own abruptness. I could not, would not, leave 
Fear Street. In a way, I almost loved Fear Street. 
It was “home.” 

“All right,” he said good humouredly. “You shall 
stay in your beautiful Soho. But you shall come to 
me as my Secretary. 

“You must see, Tempest,” he went on, lowering 
his voice curiously, “you must see, in fact you almost 
guess now, something of what is coming. During the 
last ten years you have seen how each operation led 
naturally to the one that followed — you saw that Big 
Business led, must lead inevitably, to bigger ... it 
has led to the biggest business of all — to the biggest 
business in the world . . .” and then he added, hoarse- 
ly, after a moment’s pause: “to the world itself .” 

“To the world itself.” Was the man mad? What 
did he mean? The eyeballs that looked greenly into 
mine glared in the light of the flames. Had money 
and the power of money turned this man’s brain — 
this man whom so many men called mad? What did 
he mean? 

Mandrill himself took the thought from my mind. 
“You think I’m mad?” he said. And he laughed. 
That big, gulping, toothed laugh. 

“Listen, my boy. Many men before me have tried 
to master the world . . .” — he said it as quietly as 
though he were talking about mastering a mad dog 
. . . “but they failed. Alexander tried it, and though 
he thought he had succeeded, failed. Napoleon tried 
it and he failed. Chaka the Zulu, the man they called 
‘the Slaughterer,’ tried it in his own black way, and 
he failed. That fellow tried it” — he pointed to one 
of the Stone Men on the fresco — “and he failed. Even 


312 PASSION 

Old Sabretooth tried it and he failed. And I will tell 
you why they failed. 

“They failed because they had only flesh and blood 
to do it with — brain and muscle — iron and powder. 
They failed because they lived in the age of brawn 
and brain. Those men never knew power, nor the 
possibilities of power. They were amateurs. ,, He 
waved one great paw excisively. 

“But we ... we live in the Age of Money, the 
Age of Gold, something that is stronger even than 
Brain itself — that masters Brain. The Age of Gold 
has come to replace the Age of Steel — as that replaced 
the Age of Stone — that Age of Gold which is the Age 
of Power. That Gold which is so elastic, so flexible, 
that one man can with it sway a continent — so heavy, 
so deadening, that with it he can sandbag the brains 
of a world. You don’t suppose I pile up my millions 
for the sake of money-grubbing. I pile them up be- 
cause they mean power. Gold is power — concentrated, 
intensive. 

“If there were a God of Power, my boy, he would 
have a head of gold, a face of brass, and a hand of 
iron, with Passion behind instead of Brain to swing 
the whole. Passion, the nervous, combative passion 
of the end of the nineteenth century, controls all that 
the men of the past controlled — and something more. 
It has steel to smite with; it leashes the lightnings of 
the modern explosive: controls the brawn and brain 
of the past: and with it and through it all holds by its 
gold the hearts of men, the minds of men, through 
the power of their imaginations. It holds them body 
and blood and soul. 

“But to say that Power means Passion is but to 
say that it means fight. Only that men fight to-day 


THE PHILOSOPHY OF POWER 313 


not with steel, in a sense not with brain, but with the 
Bank Balance, with Gold. The power of the Bank 
Balance is the power of to-day. Money rules the 
world, for money means might, and might means, 
yes, is right. . . 

I looked at this colossus standing there as though 
he were straddling a world. He was a sort of High 
Priest; fanatic; burning; as he preached the new 
religion — the religion of gold. But he was going on: 

. . Fight is the mainspring of life; it is the 
fount of life — it is life. It is death, too, but life rises 
phcenix-like from the ashes of death. Darwin was 
right. The world is a place of struggle, a place where 
only the fittest survive. Men can and do cloak that 
with all kinds of play-words — with humanity; senti- 
ment; social feeling; and now, the catch- word of the 
end of the nineteenth century — Democracy; but deeply, 
fundamentally, the world is a jungle in which only 
the fittest survive. The price of defeat is annihilation. 
It was annihilation when that man was young” — he 
stretched out one hairy finger at one of the Stone Men 
— “it was annihilation when that giant megatherium 
there, when Old Sabretooth, crawled the earth. It 
means annihilation to-day — annihilation in the midst 
of all our civilisation. Can you deny it?” 

He paused a moment ; breathless. 

“It is not true!” I said, breaking silence for the 
first time, my gall rising at this philosophy of power 
that was being displayed before me. “We have Social 
Reform to-day — you know that. If a man falls there 
are plenty of institutions to lift him up again. We 
have charity.” 

“ ‘Charity !’ ” The big man sneered, showing his 
teeth yellowly. “‘Charity!’ Yes, we have the work- 


314 


PASSION 


house, the gaol, the hospital, and the lunatic asylum 
for the men who fail in the battle of life — you know 
we call it the Battle of Life — and finally we have the 
Thames Embankment. What is that but annihilation 
— annihilation literal ?” 

He waited as though for an answer. I was silent. 

“But this struggle is right. It is Nature’s, it is, if 
you will, God’s way of weeding out the unfit and 
evolving the race. It is through the struggle of tooth 
and claw, through the blood and tortures of beasts 
and men that we have become what we are; that we 
have produced a Westminster Abbey and,” he hung 
a moment, “a Golgotha House. ... I believe that the 
God of Mankind is the God of Power. He is the God 
I worship, by whatever name men call him. A strange 
God. A jealous God. The triune Godhead. The 
God of Gold, of Power, and of Passion.” 

It was Madame Angelica speaking again. It was 
the Dragon House. And Mandrill was talking to con- 
vince like a man who dare not be challenged — a man 
running on a tight rope who must fall if there comes 
a check. It was that day once again when he had tried 
to convince me about the business lie. 

“But your God of Power is a god of blood,” I said, 
standing up to the logic of the man. 

“A god of blood. What other would you have him 
to be? The monsters of the deep and of the jungle 
battle together; the big fish eat the little ones; the 
big beasts the others ... yet there are as many fishes 
as ever in the sea, as many beasts in the jungle — aye, 
as many, more, men upon earth despite the slaughter- 
ings. Nature, my boy — nature — the balance of nature 
— the Survival of the Fittest — the law of life. 

“There is a Hierarchy throughout the Cosmos, 


THE PHILOSOPHY OF POWER 315 


Tempest, a Hierarchy of Power. I don’t pretend to 
know whether the gods really exist as Madame Angel- 
ica says, and I don’t much care. But that there is 
a God of Power, a Supreme God, I don’t doubt — the 
God that men have always worshipped; and that the 
cosmos itself turns upon endless struggle I don’t doubt. 
This is the logic, the inexorable logic, of life. It is 
more — it is the logic of that passion which is life.” 

“But,” I said, breaking in, determining, as I had in 
the years before determined, with Madame Angelica, 
to stop this paean to Power, “we have developed 
civilisation — we have developed humanity.” 

Mandrill smiled. “Humanity,” he said. “The man 
with the bank balance to-day can slay his millions 
where Napoleon slew his thousands. He can kill a 
man, as surely, more surely, to-day with the point of 
his pen, than his predecessor in the Age of Iron could 
with the point of his sword. He can press a button 
in London and make America shiver. He can gamble 
in the checkers of a Chicago Wheat Pit and starve 
the millions of Europe. What is more, he does it.” 

“But that’s business,” I said. “We don’t kill to-day 
as in the ages that are gone.” 

“Oh, don’t we? What was it you said when we 
shot down the strikers at the Poldhu mine? You 
threatened to leave, if I remember aright, and in the 
United States they have killed a hundred strikers for 
every one we have killed here. And then you know,” 
he added, ruminating behind his big teeth, “there is 
such a thing as modern war • . . war by machine.” 
He laughed. 

I had forgotten war. 

“Where a hundred years ago we killed our tens we 
kill our thousands to-day and we are going to kill 


316 


PASSION 


our millions to-morrow. The best brains in Europe, 
in the continent of civilisation, torture themselves to 
discover new and ingenious weapons of destruction — 
and the State holds its greatest rewards for the man- 
killer whether he be a torpedo inventor, the thinker 
behind the big gun with its twenty-mile trajectory 
and its ton of hell at the end, or the chemist of the 
future who will call out of chaos his gases and his 
poisons. We don't kill to-day !’ ” — he laughed 
again — “with Europe an armed camp waiting the 
word to throw millions of men at one another’s 
throats, men who have no quarrel with one another, 
who have not even the excuse of the man of the Stone 
Age that they kill for food and the wish to survive. 
With our seas a-bristle with battleships, with the 
paths of the deep teeming with steel fish by the side 
of which the sharks and the octopuses are angels of 
light. When we ask every man the one question — 
‘Can you kill?’ with twelve shillings out of every 
twenty spent upon the making of man-killers. We 
don’t kill.’ Oh, don’t we? We kill because we must. 
It is Nature’s law — ‘Nature red in tooth and claw.’ ” 

“But we have men of honor and probity,” I said 
despairingly. I would not let this philosophy of the 
brute, logical or not, have the last word. I hated him 
as he stood there, convincing, logical, overmastering. 

I felt I could strike him down where he stood . . . 
and then it came to me that this was the very gospel 
of fight of which he had spoken. But I came again: 

“Your gold cannot do everything — it cannot buy a 
man’s conscience.” 

Mandrill’s reply to my interruption was to break 
off, take his keys from his pocket, and walk over to 
the steel safe which stood in one corner of the room. , 


THE PHILOSOPHY OF POWER 317 


He swung back the thickness of the door and snicked 
open a drawer from which he took a paper. 

He handed it to me. I looked down a list of names 
opposite each of which in a parallel column appeared 
some figures, glimpsed the names Whyburn, Nathan, 
and lower down Skinsole and other names I knew. I 
could not understand it. 

“Each man there has his price. Every man has his 
price. That is the gospel of the City as well as of the 
Cave. It is the assumption in the law courts; it is 
the assumption of the Church when it says that money 
is the root of all evil; of the business men of the 
world when they say, dogmatic — 'Business is Busi- 
ness/ Every man has his price.” And then he added 
— “We all have to live. . . 

It was Fear Street and Park Lane meeting in the 
democracy of gold. 

There stood the names. Here the name of a lord 
— there of a minister of religion or a well-known 
business man. The butchers, bakers, and candlestick 
makers of commerce rubbed shoulders with its cap- 
tains and even with a bishop of the Church by Law 
Established; military men jostled with soap manufac- 
turers; Jew millionaire hobnobbed with titled necessity. 
“Every man has his price. # . . 

“But you don’t know that these men will sell their 
consciences for money. One must be fair. . . 

“Not their consciences . . . there are more ways 

of killing a dog than choking him with butter ... but 
their names. What’s in a name? They don’t mean, 
that is, the most of them, to be unconscientious— they 
are not clear enough and logical enough for that. 
There are not many Machiavellis, not even in Big 
Business. But you know we have Masters and Why- 


318 


PASSION 


burn and Aston and Belsingham and a score of others. 
Every man has his price. . . . 

“But that is enough of that, Tempest. I haven't 
brought you here to talk philosophy, even though as 
you see my philosophy is above argument. I face the 
logic of facts. I am the only man in Big Business 
who does. I don’t pigeonhole my consciences. I wor- 
ship my God, and I don’t hesitate to call him the God 
of Power — of Gold — though now he has taken an- 
other form. To me he is the copper god. They call 
me the Copper Man, you know:” and he smiled. 

“The copper god . . . the copper god.” The words 
struck something resonant in me. And then I re- 
membered. It was my god — the copper halfpenny — 
the god in the box again. “The copper god.” The 
god in the box. 

“I have worked day and night — my agents through- 
out the world, your Shout Department, have worked 
for this hour. You know that we have amalgamated 
and federated and combined; liquidated and divided 
and planned and schemed ; bought and sold in the open 
as in the secret places of the city; kept the wires of 
the world red-hot with the messages that have juggled 
with the copper stocks of the world. In this, the Age 
of the Combine, you have watched our local combines 
grow by that Law of Combination which is the law 
of modern commercial life, the very condition of 
existence, into national combines; have seen our na- 
tional combines take form until now, as I speak, we 
are ready to weld them into one big International 
Combine, and when that has been accomplished here 
in Europe we will make our supreme bid for the con- 
trol of the copper stocks, that is, of the raw copper of 


THE PHILOSOPHY OF POWER 319 


the World, by the pitting of the copper interests of 
the Old World against those of the New. 

“Your little friend Madame Angelica like others 
has made her journey ings through the capitals of 
Europe to help in this. She has used what she calls 
the thread of a Woman’s hair to spin the nets in which 
we have taken our enemies — and our friends — and to 
bind to us the financiers and the money men of the 
Old World. 

“Only Squid stands outside.” 

He said “Squid” as I had heard him say it a score 
of times — as I had heard those others say it — with a 
changed voice — with a sense of something impending, 
something colossal, elemental, like himself. 

“Only Squid stands outside. Squid. 

“Squid alone has held himself outside our plan, has 
challenged us in the Great Game. Squid alone refuses 
to deal. He has as you know formed his own group 
of American interests; because he means like, yes, 
like me, to master the world. He has mastered the 
New World as I am about to master the Old, when I 
have amalgamated the European copper interests. 

“The world cannot have two masters. One or the 
other of us must go down to defeat ... of which I 
have already told you the price. We have set every 
copper halfpenny, every brain filament, against him in 
the scales. If we master copper, we master mankind. 
Men must have copper if it is only for their battleships 
and their guns and their shells — if it’s only to kill 
with. If we win the game, the Great Game, we, I, 
shall be master of copper, and with it master of the 
world itself.” 

The big man sank into his chair as he finished. The 
flush had died from his face, the fire from his eyes. 


320 


PASSION 


He was bloodless, eyeless. It was as though something 
had sucked at him as he spoke, something that held 
him in its grip, sapped him. And for the moment I 
thought the great mouth had slanted ... it was 
surely on one side. 


XXX 


THE COPPER MAN 

And now the Cave began to rumble in earnest. It 
was a cave of the winds with doors banging like dis- 
tant explosions; flying figures; the everlasting click 
of the typewriters and calculating machines that tapped 
like machine-guns through the building. There were 
meetings of the Copper Finance, ordinary Board 
Meetings, meetings of selected shareholders, secret 
meetings, going on through the day and sometimes 
far into the night. Vogel's croak and Nathan’s white 
teeth were omnipresent, with behind the growl and 
bite of the big man himself. 

The shadows of the newspaper men seemed to per- 
manise themselves behind the brass bars of the great 
office as one looked across it, flitting hungrily up and 
down. The imp in the glass cage had become quad- 
rupled, and one could see them bobbing up and down, 
whistling through the rows of tubes, hear the hiss of 
the pneumatic under their hands ; ushering ; snapping ; 
snarling sometimes, for the strain of the place was 
beginning to raw-edge the tempers of even the young- 
est there. Perky telegram boys, their square peaked 
caps cocked impertinently, pervaded the place, with 
a never-ending line of boys in the black and silver of 
the cable services making their way to and from the 
entrance. Telephones were buzzing and the central 
switchboard had been quadrupled like the other things. 

321 


322 


PASSION 


Only Mr. Crosbill remained entirely unmoved as 
he sat in his cage like a dodo, solemn as ever, and The 
Jackal, who peered red-rimmed and indifferent from 
his lookout. 

There were many Craggses, little bullet - headed 
men who sat gnawing their whiskers hungrily on the 
long benches, for everybody was too busy to attend 
to them. The Reverend Skinsole, with his big wan- 
dering eyes, was ubiquitous, leading with him indi- 
vidual favored members of his congregation from the 
North London tabernacle, once even inserting him- 
self into Mandrill’s Holy of Holies. The brass-bound 
commissionaires had been reinforced at the doors. In 
Golgotha Place there was the toot-toot of an occa- 
sional motor; the clack-clack of the hansoms; the roll 
of wheels day in and day out, with Mandrill’s chest- 
nuts prancing through the riot ; and Hawkling, a pale 
shadow, who someone said had nearly been crushed 
by the big horses. 

The Publicity was one of the vortexes of the new 
movements, for before the pending European Com- 
bine in Copper, Mandrill wished us he said to go 
through Europe with a fine-tooth comb so as to have 
every copper halfpenny to throw into the scales against 
Squid when the time came. Before six months were 
over my International scheme was in full blast, and 
already this part of the Cave threatened to overshadow 
all others. 

That man we had taken from Sinnett, the advertis- 
ing expert, had fallen down when it came to the Big 
Idea, and so we left him in charge of his own special 
department which he filled to a nicety. Mandrill was 
never-ceasing in his efforts to get the right man to 
fill my old place, and in the meantime, though I was 


THE COPPER MAN 


323 


now his right-hand man, always with him, I kept a 
sort of watching brief on my own department. There 
was a warped little devil, a man named Arkus, who 
had been climbing up hand over hand in the Shout 
Department. He was eating up his competitors one 
by one, pulling them down like a weasel, and we had 
our eyes on him for the place. He looked such a 
worm, and so delicate, that we feared to hand over 
such a responsible position to him — but he shaped like 
what Mandrill called “the goods.’* He was a sort of 
protege of my own, for I had discovered him in Fear 
Street, an out-of-work clerk, and he had attached him- 
self to me like a faithful animal and knew my ways 
and the groundwork of the department. And this 
miserable-looking, half-starved Cockney had the Big 
Idea. 

Anyhow, with our help, he was keeping the pot boil- 
ing, as he said, managing the “Expert” and the “Owl” 
(which had come back again), “Moneypots” and the 
“Daily Manipulator,” with the cloud of other papers 
hanging on to their skirts, in his own peculiar but ef- 
fective fashion. “The Tribune” obstinately refused 
to be managed, however, and with one or two other 
papers continued the attacks upon “Copper Kings’* 
and “Copper Combines.” But as Mandrill said, they, 
like Bastable, Seamans & Co., had old-fashioned ideas 
of business — “and look at the position of Bastable, 
Seamans & Co. to-day.” Also the efforts of these 
papers were considerably offset by the cloud of doubt- 
ful financial “rags” which applauded their efforts. 

Our Publicity sheets fluttered over Europe like a 
flight of white birds, finding their way to investors 
in all countries from the Continental branches of the 
Department, which with the help of Madame Angelica 


324 


PASSION 


had been established within the offices of the financiers 
who were Mandrill’s foreign colleagues. “Arrange- 
ments” had long since been made with the more venal 
of the Continental financial sheets, and Mandrill be- 
gan to talk about getting hold of some of the Amer- 
ican papers, having indeed already made tentative ef- 
forts in New York. Anyhow, nothing escaped him 
or the Shout Department the noise and boom of which 
began to fill even the daily press, in which one con- 
stantly saw the name “Mandrill” or that half-admir- 
ing, half-fearful adjective — “Mandrillian.” 

The public now, under the influence of the Publicity 
Department and of the Mandrillian Press, as it was 
beginning to be called, were rushing hither and thither 
like men in a boat about to founder, following the 
Copper Man whither he called brassily. “The Cy- 
clops,” the great threepenny daily, had a leader about 
“The Pied Piper of Hamlin,” which at once called 
forth a sharp retort from the smart, up-to-date press, 
which without influence from our side and obviously 
quite sincerely, spoke of “those robust qualities which 
had made England what she is;” and afraid of the 
rising democracy and especially of the dreaded word, 
Socialism, pointed out the need of virile men of the 
Mandrill type to prevent a nation, a nation untouched 
by war in its own land for a thousand years, from 
sinking into degenerates. 

And this battle in the daily press began to be heard 
even inside the House of Commons itself, where there 
was an ever-increasing tendency for Big Business to 
find its group representation apart from party. Beer 
had its champions; the railways had theirs; the legal 
profession had sent their representatives to the House 
to look after legal interests, and someone had said that 


THE COPPER MAN 


325 


nearly twenty per cent, of the whole House now were 
lawyers. And, as Mandrill said, why should not the 
real Big Business, Finance itself, the keystone, the 
mainspring, of the whole fabric of business, have its 
special representatives ? 

Anyhow, here and there men began to stand up as 
the mouthpieces of what I suppose was beginning to 
be called Mandrillism. It is true they never mentioned 
Mandrill by name; but they spoke of Business; and 
Business Interests; and Big Business in a way which 
showed, and as was plain to be seen, quite honestly, 
that they regarded any check to it, especially in the 
form of that “Socialistic legislation” of which they 
often talked, as detrimental to the interests of the 
Empire. One of them, Sir Goring Bull, even went so 
far as to say that Empire and Big Business were one 
and the same thing, an assertion which brought a 
storm of dissent from an almost united House and 
from the Conservative benches in particular. 

Mandrill, for all his roaring assertiveness, held his 
thorax through all this. “All the better for us, Tem- 
pest,” he said. “Stimulates public interest — keeps the 
public eye on us and on the Cave.” And once, giving 
rein to one of those fits of propaganda, as I felt them 
to be, he said, like some Berserk prophet of old: “The 
time will come when we shall have only two parties in 
Parliament — the party of Big Business and the party 
of Democracy. Already the orthodox parties are in 
the throes of economic disintegration, already the old 
landmarks are being obliterated — this is the day of 
Big Business . . . and of Democracy,” he added after 
a moment with the lust of struggle in his eyes. 

In fact, everything was going our way; everything 
but Squid. We always felt this thing working' in the 


326 


PASSION 


background; there had been one or two ugly checks 
to our operations ; feelers out before the main engage- 
ment, and the “Expert” and even the “Manipulator” 
had had some rather doubtful leaders about “opera- 
tions in copper.” “The Financial Tribune,” a paper 
beyond reproach as always, attacked Mandrill almost 
daily, but the public only took it as jealousy, and the 
“Tribune” had not the way of the new financial jour- 
nalism — not the way of the Shout Department ; it was 
not megaphonic enough in a day of nervous deafness, 
not scintillating enough. We caught the eye and the 
ear every time. 

I cannot say that I was quite at peace over all this 
Big Business — anyhow, I was unclear. Each day 
brought its own worries, its own work, and I had no 
time to think. Though I say it myself, I was becom- 
ing tremendously effective. It was a sensation of 
curious wonder to sit there in the room that gave on 
to the Den, and guide this involved business about me. 
I felt like a man in the steering room of a giant liner. 
A touch of the hand and the whole fabric swung to 
the will. I had now powers of dismissal in my hands, 
and Mandrill had even hinted darkly at partnerships. 
My bank balance was becoming inconveniently large, 
and as my tastes remained simple, as simple as those 
of the big man himself, I had no outlet for the money 
that was piling itself up, unless I followed Mandrill’s 
advice to put it into his final coup. But it was not the 
money. It was the power. My head was turned with 
the power and the dazement of it. 

Men whose names were great in the City came to 
me, humbly. I was more and more regarded as the 
avenue to Mandrill. His callers had to pass through 
my hands. And all this incense and flattery, even 


THE COPPER MAN 


327 


though I knew it for what it was worth, fumed my 
head; fumed it as the Dragon House had done. It 
was just in that way. 

I had been to some society functions at Mandrill's 
request, in which the big man was the all-pervading, 
roaring lion, looking on the whole thing, on Society, 
as he looked on the Church, as part of Big Business. 
And here also I was feted and flattered; women promi- 
nent in society coming round me to get tips in Copper, 
tips I never gave. I had been many times to the palace 
in Park Lane, where I saw the art treasures he had 
bought up, or which had been bought for him, in the 
four quarters of the globe, and had heard and saw 
how Art, like the Artist and those other things, were 
to him but appendages to Big Business. 

There I had been introduced to the tall soft-faced 
woman I had seen that day at Princes', now with the 
white hairs showing in the brown. Also to the chil- 
dren, whom Mandrill loved as passionately as he did 
their mother, and who like her believed “the King 
could do no wrong.” 

This was one of the things that puzzled me more 
than anything else, in the fleeting way that such things 
did at this time. Mrs. Mandrill — she could have been 
Lady Mandrill had she chosen, but Mandrill rejected 
contemptuously the overtures made to him by the 
treasurers of politics — was a deeply religious woman 
who I knew said her prayers night and morning and 
made her children say theirs. From our conversa- 
tions I could see that she, who had never been to the 
Cave, had the vaguest ideas of what we did there, 
but believed like the Earl of Whyburn that we were 
pillars of State holding the Empire and Religion to- 
gether. Mandrill she regarded, as in his own way he 


328 


PASSION 


did himself, as a deeply religious man, incapable of 
wrong-doing. She, like him, subscribed to the doc- 
trine that when a man went down in the life struggle 
it was his own fault. She ascribed it to original sin 
— he to lack of power, the only sin. And when I 
spoke to her, I thought of Mrs. Clarence and my five 
pounds and this was mixed in some shadowy way with 
the Reverend Skinsole and Craggs and the members 
of the North London tabernacle. 

But with all this I learned the lesson of Big Busi- 
ness ... to be cold under stress ; to look your enemy 
in the face ; and to lie easily. 

Yet, despite the lesson, despite the dazement of 
power, my writing refused to die without a struggle. 
I thought it had vanished under the strain of Big 
Business, but it kept coming back at me, coming back 
at me like the face of Aase Wilde, which haunted me 
at the most inconvenient moments. At my Board 
Meetings; when speaking to Mandrill; in my room; 
and always when I spoke with Madame Angelica, who 
now was a constant visitor at Golgotha House. I had 
met Aase Wilde once or twice and often saw her as 
she went out with her little black bag to some street 
accident, or to visit some of the measles and whoop- 
ing cough of Fear Street, where she had quite dis- 
placed me in the affectionate popularity of the in- 
habitants. She was “the Lady Doctor” to everybody, 
and though at the beginning, with its inherited tradi- 
tions as to what was and what was not correct for a 
lady, Fear Street refused to give her its trust and its 
sixpences — I was her first patient, I believe — she 
gradually wore this down and the young man at the 
corner was having a bad time of it. 

Anyhow, whenever I saw the slight tautened figure 


THE COPPER MAN 


329 


going down the murk of the street, whenever I caught 
the sharp recognition from the eyes with the red lights 
in them, the quick nod of the tumultuous hair, I felt 
dissatisfied, irritated, discontented, and I found my- 
self going back to my manuscripts, ‘like a dog to his 
vomit,” as I said to myself. (I had once even ven- 
tured to show one of them to Aase Wilde.) My pros- 
pectuses were too literary. They, like Fear Street, 
like the Shout Department, like the clerks, gave me 
impressions. The posters gave me impressions. Vo- 
gel and Nathan and Mandrill, especially the last, gave 
me impressions. These impressions grew faint, but 
they came and came again, and under all there was 
something prickling at me, something that would not 
be smothered, to express myself. A rising passion to 
express. 

Yes, money, power, was one method of expression, 
but though it was a means to express, it was the deadly 
enemy of that other expression which began to define 
itself. In some indistinct way Aase Wilde had made 
me understand this — scarcely by conversation, for we 
seldom spoke together, but in a way it came to me by 
looking at her. It awoke once more my critical facul- 
ties: I began more and more to examine the lives of 
these men about me, to feel that rising, almost pas- 
sionate, resentment and opposition to Mandrill — and 
it seemed to me at times that all this “was of the 
things that perish.” I began more and more to want 
a place “where neither moth nor dust doth corrupt nor 
thieves break through and steal.” 


XXXI 


THE HEM OF HIS GARMENT 

This discontent of mine at times mounted to passion, 
to fever. It brought back those first days in London 
when I had wandered and wondered alone. I found 
myself only able to assuage it, to hold it under, by two 
things, which appeared, however, to have no relation 
to each other: by avoiding Aase Wilde and by losing 
myself in the merciful unconsciousness of the Cave. 

My temper was, unlike my usual habit, changeable; 
fretful; undependable. I found myself constantly be- 
trayed into unfairness towards the men who worked 
under me. I had given the terrible Hookgorm a dress- 
ing down which surprised me as much as him. Old 
Pippin I overheard say that I was suffering from 
swelled head, which worried me more than I cared to 
admit, for Pippin’s judgments were usually exact; 
whilst Vogel croaked approvingly: “Like master like 
man ;” as though I were developing into a second Man- 
drill. I had a bad temper, but not a swelled head. 
Even I knew that. 

The roar of the place was a counter-irritant to my 
temper. I was, so to speak, only at rest when I was 
working, losing my head and my consciousness in the 
whirl of the place; concentrating upon the immediate 
operation; and troubling as little to think of the end 
of the thing as either Nathan or Vogel or Whyburn, 
Skinsole or Craggs. I except Mandrill, who, and I 
330 


THE HEM OF HIS GARMENT 331 


think rightly, claimed to be the only logical exponent 
of Big Business alive with the exception of Squid. He 
knew exactly what he Was doing and why he was 
doing it and what was coming; and I remember him 
chaffing Sir Banff Bancroft, the Lombard Street 
banker, who was one of the financiers at the back of 
us, by telling him that the modern banker worked 
by rule of thumb, that he knew what happened yester- 
day and what would happen to-morrow, but that he 
knew as little of the machine of modern finance, its 
origin and its end, as an electrician knew of the 
dynamo into which he had fallen. Sir Banff admitted 
it bluffly. “We all work by tradition/’ he said. “Rule 
of thumb is the foundation of the British Empire.” 

I at least was unconscious. Critical, analytical as 
I was, I blenched from the analysis of Big Business. 
I knew that Mandrill aimed at conquering the world, 
at despotism; but what was to come after I could 
not see. I could only suppose that the rising democ- 
racy would kill him, only that he had once said that 
money controlled the three pillars of State— the army, 
the navy, and the police, which were formed from the 
democracy. And I couldn’t see Democracy fighting 
itself. It was all a muddle. But Power tasted sweet 
in the mouth, and everybody was in it. 

Yet I could not shut out the head of the girl with 
the tousled hair. Sometimes she would pass me on 
the stairs as I went out or came home, leaving behind 
that impalpable scent from her hair which had come 
to me that first time I had spoken with her. Or I 
would see the high shoulders disappearing in the 
glooms of the Fear Street house; or see her in the 
street with the urchins clinging to her white skirts; 
or hear of her through Mrs. S., who always spoke of 


332 


PASSION 


her as “Ducky,” her highest form of approval. Even 
Mrs. McWhirter, who so seldom spoke, once broke 
out to me that she loved her. I ought not to have been 
irritated, I had no right, but all this incense and appro- 
bation angered me. I felt as though I had a personal 
grievance against this self-possessed girl who some- 
times looked at me amusedly as she passed me, some- 
times seriously. She seemed to take me as a joke. 
Nobody in the Cave took me as a joke. Quite the 
reverse. 

I found the tousled hair of this girl coming between 
me and my night's rest. I would w*ake in the night 
and stare at the ceiling or out of the windows, fuming 
. . . at what? I would regale myself with visions 
of my new-found power, of the future — would find 
myself half-asleep, topping the world, sharing its em- 
pire with Mandrill ... or sometimes, a nightmarish 
dream of combat with him, whilst the girl with the 
red hair looked on amusedly. 

She followed me to the City ; I could hear her voice 
through my windows and discover it was that of a 
girl in the street; in the outer office and discover it 
was a page. She sat at the other side of my table, 
the high dainty shoulders intruded themselves as al- 
ways at the most inconvenient moments. 

I had spoken with her occasionally, as I have said. 
She had stopped me one day to ask after my “nerves” 
as though I were a girl ; something I took as an insult. 
Once indeed she asked me if I still felt “cancerous.” 
Obviously she took me as a sort of pathological joke. 

And once, most irritating of all, when I really be- 
lieved this old pain had come back, she had raw-edged 
me by laughing at me, holding up her finely beautiful 
hands in horror at the idea of discussing bodily aih 


THE HEM OF HIS GARMENT 333 


merits; and had treated me like a nervous girl instead 
of like a doctor as I felt I had the right to be treated. 

She refused to encourage my pathological attempts 
at conversation, declaring that no girl — she did not 
say “doctor'' — could listen to this sort of thing — she 
heard enough of this kind of thing every day and she 
wouldn’t talk shop. If I insisted, she became ironic: 
an irony with understanding in it I thought sometimes. 

Here was a pretty thing. A doctor who refused to 
let a patient consult her ; who laughed at cancer ; who 
obviously regarded Big Business and the representa- 
tives of Big Business — myself to wit — as of no ac- 
count. For I had, boyishly, impatiently, once taken 
the opportunity of telling her something about myself 
and Golgotha House as an excuse for my nerves. 
Overwork; responsibility; and so on. And she had 
laughed. 

She was impossible. 

And then my irritation — sometimes she would leave 
me speechless with indignation — would change at 
times, change to something else, to a feeling of friend- 
ship. All my longings for a friend, when I walked in 
Piccadilly and the streets, would surge about me. The 
girl in the elephant grey velvet came to my eyes — the 
loneliness of my early days in London — even my 
father and mother. And I wanted to tell this strange, 
proud girl everything about myself and to ask her to 
be my friend. 

This would be followed by revulsions against the 
City, against Mandrill, which were physical suffering. 
There were hours when I had almost decided to throw 
up the whole thing, to get my head out of the ruck 
of the coming operation and my bank balance, and 
write. But when I got to the Cave, heard the roar 


334 


PASSION 


of the struggle, and got my head down again to the 
trail, I forgot all this, and there would come another 
revulsion — this time against the girl with the red hair. 

After one of these fits, I was determined to con- 
vince her, to pit myself against her as though she had 
been a physical enemy. She should know that money 
could do everything, that power was the only thing 
in life. I would win over Mickey, the little man who 
used to sit with his head in the corner as though it 
were too heavy for him, listening with those grey 
eyes of his. I would offer him a place in the Cave. I 
wanted a private messenger. 

I made this the excuse to see her. At this time I 
was always making excuses to see her. Mickey was 
polishing Jesper in the corner, breathing and rubbipg 
up his yellow bones, when I made my offer. 

“Ask Mickey,” she said. 

I told Mickey the story of the Cave, its chances, its 
dazzling prospects, whereat his big grey eyes opened 
luminously. I told the story passionately, as Mandrill 
had once told it to me, for I felt that she was laugh- 
ing at me, that Jesper was laughing. “And so, 
Mickey,” I said, “if you are a good boy and quick, 
you can be where I am to-day,” I said a trifle irritated, 
grandiloquently. 

“. . . Arrah, and lave the Docthor?” 

“Yes,” I said. “You would have to leave the Doc- 
tor; of course.” 

The boy hung a moment. Then he said: “Arrah, 
Sor, ye don’t understand. Better be wid the Doctor 
with nothing and a quiet life than lashins and lavins 
in the City. ’Tisn’t the money I want. Money is a 
dirty thing, anyhow.” 

Even this suckling despised Big Business. And he 


THE HEM OF HIS GARMENT 335 


was right: “Better be near the Doctor. . . Big 
business was a little thing by the side of the Doctor. 
I had my answer. But I was angry, too. 

“And you also despise Big Business,’' I said rather 
rudely, turning to the girl. 

“No,” said she. “I have never said anything at 
all about Big Business.” 

It was true and irritating. Aase Wilde was always 
irritating — and true. 

Jesper was laughing at me as I went out. 

What puzzled me was that when I was with her, 
I felt a curious exaltation of mind; for she, she was 
exalting. And this exaltation alternated with dis- 
tressed annoyance — once with a fit of anger. I was 
the flickering electric filament when in contact with 
her, flicking from light to dark and then to light 
again. Sometimes when my thoughts were most 
exalted, most ether ic, perhaps at the glance of her 
hair, they would run wilful, inconsequent, to the hair 
of other women, who were her opposite — and some- 
times I would see her even in the women of the street 
— in the women who were all that she was not. 

Was it that I had lost something in the past — some- 
thing that could never be replaced? Had something 
touched the hem of my garment in the old days in the 
city streets? 

It was damp earth and moonlight again. 

But that Thing which I was strangling, never 
tangled itself in her garments. Towards her, in a 
way, I had a fine conscience, a high honour, even when 
I hated, was repelled by, her. 

The thing was defining itself still more. For now 
I had discovered it was “heartless, conscienceless,” 
as I had thought of it as a child. 


336 


PASSION 


It needed strangeness, the Strange Woman, uncon- 
sciousness, yes, it needed hate, on which to batten. It 
drew its vitality from hate, from what men called 
passion. 


XXXII 


BIG GAME 

We masked our operations and covered our tracks 
until we were right on the edge of the biggest thing 
we had so far tried — the unification of the European 
Copper Interests. What this had meant nobody knew 
but Mandrill. It had meant the planning and organ- 
isation of coteries of financiers in the chief European 
countries ; it had meant negotiation infinite ; the allay- 
ing of jealousy; the gratification of cupidity. It had 
meant the covering of Europe with a fine mesh. The 
setting of snares, cunning, interminable. It had in- 
volved in the machinery alone the expenditure of 
millions. It had demanded secrecy complete. 

It would have been impossible, as Mandrill said, 
ten short years before ; but now the Shipping interests 
of Europe were talking about the formation of an 
International Shipping Trust to meet the growing 
Internationalisation of Democracy, and finance, that 
very shy bird, was getting used to the idea — the Big 
Idea. 

Mandrill may have known the exact figures of what 
we had paid out to get something like control of a 
part of the financial newspapers in the chief cities — in 
Paris, Vienna, Berlin, etc., but nobody else did. The 
continental advertising had long since passed out of 
control of the Shout Department, and each country 
337 


* 


338 


PASSION 


as I have said had its own Shout Department, gon- 
trolled by Mandrill’s nominees and colleagues. The 
European copper experts we held in the hollows of 
our hands, with the exception of firms like Bastable, 
Seamans & Co., who stood out — were “frozen out” 
Mandrill said. 

We kept the Stock Exchanges of Europe sizzling; 
pulling the shares up and down with an invisible hand ; 
hedging and selling, buying and amalgamating and 
floating-off under the ever-rising fever in copper — 
“Copperitis” it was being called. The advertisement 
“Why don’t you buy copper now?” was standing in 
half a dozen languages and in half a hundred papers 
as a permanent advertisement; the investors were 
rushing hither and thither as we moved the magnet 
which drew them. In vain papers like “The Cyclops” 
pointed out that Capital was jumpy, that Capital was 
feverish, that another South Sea Bubble was on the 
tapis, that the investor — especially the little investor 
— should beware. It was, however, just the little in- 
vestor who had the scent strong in the nostril, that 
they were no more able to control than they could 
have controlled a mad elephant. “The little investor 
was amok” Mandrill had said. 

The American interests, however, let us hear from 
them. One of the financial “bosses” in the States, 
Vanderdecken, had his standing advertisement-arti- 
cles — a variation of my non-personal advertisement — 
in the American Press, headed “Frenetic Finance,” 
and “Copper Kings and Copperheads,” scaring people 
off copper, warning them against the lure of the cir- 
culars and papers with which we flooded the New 
World. He even sent his advertisements to the Lon- 
don press, which printed them sometimes and took the 


BIG GAME 


339 


money, but the “Expert,” the “Manipulator,” and the 
other papers, with the exception of “The Owl” and 
“£: s: d,” which had now definitely abandoned us, 
refused to have anything to do with them on the plea 
that it was a sort of blackmail levied on legitimate 
business; and although this man Vanderdecken had 
no effect in Europe Worth talking about, we found 
after a time that we were wasting time and money in 
our endeavour to capture the United States. “Uncle 
Sam was not biting,” the “New York Finance” said. 
“Instead, he had been bitten. Anyhow he was just 
now up to his neck in Pork.” 

By this time Squid was beginning to let us feel him 
not only through Vanderdecken, but in a hundred 
other ways. It was not so much what he did at this 
time that worried us as what we felt he was going to 
do or planning to do. Even Mandrill was restive at 
times. “If the fellow would only come out into the 
open . . .” he would say and clench his fists. “If he 
would only come out. ...” But Squid wouldn’t. It 
was not his way. That was Mandrill’s. 

We could feel sometimes that our most carefully 
kept secrets had leaked out. None of them, it is true, 
of vital importance, but still secrets, and important 
enough in their way. 

The European Combine itself, however, went 
through behind the scenes, and quite secretly, without 
any sign from Squid, which w*as very satisfactory as 
secrecy was essential to the success of our final opera- 
tion against him. Mandrill was jubilant. 

This intricate final operation involved a vast pass- 
ing of documents, an army of lawyers who were never 
far from us, though very little writing. Until the 
final documents were signed most of the negotiations 


340 


PASSION 


were conducted by word of mouth, and during Man- 
drill’s frequent absences I found myself in a sense in 
charge of Golgotha House. 

Yet the thing had got out somehow, though nobody 
seemed to know exactly what had taken place, or who 
were the people behind it. Leaders began to show 
themselves in the anti-Mandrill press hinting at a vast 
amalgamation of capital, at a Money Trust, which, as 
“The Cyclops” said, was enough to “stagger human- 
ity,” a favourite expression of the time. It said that 
of course the Trust was not actually in existence, but 
it was coming, and it, the organ of the aristocracy, 
spoke of the powers of the modern Plutocracy, which 
they said was fast displacing the older aristocracy. 
“We have had an Aristocracy of birth and of breed- 
ing, at which the Democracy has grumbled: now we 
are to have an Aristocracy of Wealth. The world 
may find its last state worse than its first.” 

“The Recorder,” a Conservative paper, spoke more 
plainly, saying that “even Democracy in the guise of 
the Man in the Red Cap was preferable to this new 
tyranny, and that if necessary the Aristocracy would 
have to join hands with the Democracy to fight it.” 
However, the “smart” press said point blank that first 
of all a Money Trust was an impossibility, secondly 
that if it came into existence it would break down, 
and thirdly that the Law of Competition would keep 
humanity on an even keel . . . and through the arti- 
cles there ran certain phrases recurrent — “The Law 
of Supply and Demand ;” . . . “the Law of Combina- 
tion;” . . . “the Survival of the Fittest;” . . . “the 
unchangeable Laws of Economics;” . . . “the Evolu- 
tion of Man” and so on, whilst the word “virility” 
strung the whole together. 


BIG GAME 


341 


This last press, which of course was not a financial 
press, would stand no nonsense. It said, and said it 
quite honestly, certainly without influence from us, 
which would have been rejected scornfully even if 
Mandrill had dared to use it, that no restraint must 
be placed upon sane sound business; that we wanted 
no State interference — and that such interference was 
only masked Socialism. They put what looked like 
an unanswerable case against the constant hamper- 
ing tendency of organized labour and the policy of 
“ca* canny.” They said that Society, which was some- 
thing other than Socialism or Democracy run riot, 
could deal with its Mandrills and its Money Trusts 
when they dominated Society. “But they could not 
dominate Society, for the Money Trust could not come 
into being.” 

Yet “The Cyclops” came back to the attack, and 
showed how the old party system was breaking down ; 
the steady tendency inside Parliament to make busi- 
ness questions rather than political questions the 
questions of the day; that Social Reform alone chal- 
lenged financial questions and business questions in- 
side the House; and there were paragraphs about the 
loss of dignity and prestige of the Mother of Parlia- 
ments with side references to the great days and the 
great names of the past. Once, in a guarded para- 
graph, it referred to the pity that titled incompetence 
should have to sell itself in the market to the highest 
bidder. However, the Earl of Whyburn soon settled 
that in a splendid letter dictated by Mandrill. 

Mandrill now began to talk definitely about having 
a Big Business party in Parliament ... as a Party, 
and talked about running me for the House to help 
in the battle. He had great ideas of my powers of 


342 


PASSION 


speech from my addresses to the shareholders at the 
Grand Orient. But I had, however cloudily, begun 
to develop political ideas of my own — very shadowy, 
very open, but still “ideas.” The only thing in them 
that was at all defining itself Was that Democracy, 
that rising Democracy which was in the air, was the 
opponent of Big Business. But I honestly could not 
say on which side I stood — I could see so many weak- 
nesses in Democracy from the standpoint of organisa- 
tion and efficiency. And I was a fighting competitive 
animal. And there was always power. 

There were other things also that disturbed me — a 
disturbance out of all proportion to the things them- 
selves. They were trifles which stuck. It was not 
only the head of the girl with the red hair ; there was 
always that man Hawkling hanging about, that 
Hawkling who was now in a really deplorable condi- 
tion, past helping, who swallowed down my half 
sovereigns as fast as I gave them to him. He never 
said anything, but looked reproachfully at me if I 
passed him, and once I had been abrupt with him. I 
had got him one job after another as messenger or 
porter, but he lost them all and nobody would have 
him now with his pale flabby face, his nearly bald 
head, and the eyes that had almost disappeared in the 
folds of flesh. It was a miserable business. 

And there was Smeeter — for through all this hurly- 
burly Smeeter moved with his pale face, the great 
black rings around the eyes, looking more owlish than 
ever. He moved there, a cog in the wheels of Big 
Business. Of course, Hawkling and he were nothing 
to talk about, there were thousands of their like in 
Big Business, and it was all very ridiculous, but they 
spoiled the taste of power in the mouth. 


BIG GAME 


343 


Still, in the meantime, Mandrill was quietly arrang- 
ing and planning behind the scenes for the last coup — 
the coup for the cornering of copper and control of 
the world. The roar of the Cave was a subdued mur- 
mur. Our prospectuses had ceased to flow out. 
Things were simmering. 

And there I was, caught up in the rising wave of 
power where it gathered to hurl itself upwards under 
the wan lights of the City, and like a tidal wave to 
submerge a world — but it left me more and more dis- 
contented and desperate, sometimes hating everything 
and everybody, including myself. The gold had en- 
tered into my soul, but there was the deference of the 
City Police, big sleek cattish men, as that of the great 
ones of the City when we made our triumphal proces- 
sion through the streets behind the snorting chestnuts, 
and it was fine when the commissionaires called “Make 
way! Make way there !” as w*e drove through the 
Place. 

There was power here and passion — a sort of 
passionate pilgrimage — but I would ask myself in- 
consequently again and again: “Where did the girl 
with the red hair stand in all this ?” 


XXXIII 


THE CRY IN THE NIGHT 

It was this irritation I suppose which drove me again 
to talk with Aase Wilde. These fits of irritation and 
depression always did. It seemed as though there was 
something I had to explain, to justify, to her, to her 
who never asked me to justify anything. It was the 
Mandrill in me, I suppose, the Mandrill which would 
not let even the smallest thing overbear him — a con- 
vincing, argumentative being. 

I only know that after this last operation at the 
Cave I found myself, with the resolve to speak to her, 
one February night in one of the densest fogs I had 
seen in London. It was a thick yellow blanket, a 
woolly effusion that clogged nose and eyes and lungs 
as I had come down Golgotha Place. 

I had nearly lost my way coming into Fear Street. 
Faces came and went, spectral in the sulphurous 
efflorescence. Once a girl, the paint dripping on her 
cheeks in encarmined lines, her fringe hanging dankly 
on her forehead, had looked at me piteously for a 
moment as I turned the corner by the doctor’s, had 
said something to me in French and then with a 
muttered “Pardon!” had passed into the night. Once 
or twice I caught the sound of wheels, a horse had 
nearly run over me as I crossed; and out of the fog 
there came cries and sounds of people, invisible, talk- 
ing. It was as though I alone of all things in this fog 
344 


THE CRY IN THE NIGHT 


345 


were alive, visible, and that I listened to the sounds of 
a dead city that had once been living — and I thought 
of t'he story of the man who had found the lost city 
of the desert and heard the cries of the street vendors 
and the noise of horses and had seen the painted faces 
that looked into his. 

At last I felt my way to the broken steps hoping 
to find in the house something of clearness. But the 
fog, blind, had groped its way everywhere. It filled 
the staircases, whiffed down the passages, and left 
the gas-jets on the landings little splutters of dirty 
yellow. The only thing alive in the house was the 
Clarences’ new piano, and Mr. Clarence singing in 
that high sugary tenor of his: 

“I want no stars in heaven to guide me ; 

I want no music from the skies, 

With thee, dear love, dear love, beside me ; 

Whene’er I look in Beauty’s Eyes ...” 

It came and went in high sweet sentiment. And it 
came to me with the sound of the piano that another 
relation had died and had left Mr. and Mrs. Clarence 
one of the ugliest little slum properties in Soho, which 
had left them “flush,” and, as Big Reggie with a nice 
sense of humor had confided to me through his 
roguish nose, Mrs. Clarence entirely unconscious of 
the fact that the most of her rents came from the 
girls of Soho. She needed some such consolation, 
for she was now always sobbing to herself for no 
apparent reason — I had seen her red-eyed more than 
once when I had spoken to her and she looked in her 
way quietly heartbroken, whilst her husband, sprucer 
than ever, had something hectic about him. 


346 


PASSION 


It was the fog, my nameless irritation when I 
thought of Mrs. Clarence, which made her husband’s 
voice get on my nerves. I knew, for I had been speak- 
ing with him a few days before, that he went upon 
the middle-class axiom that all work is a sort of dis- 
grace, when he had informed me that, “as for him, 
he never meant to do another stroke of work as long 
as he lived.” He spoke like a man who had been 
overworked the best part of his life. And this came 
back to me also and irritated me. Hawkling also 
that day had been unusually troublesome and had 
weakly fought the commissionaires when they tried 
to put him away from the door ... all these things 
flitted through my mind as I passed up the stairs 
catching the hiss of McWhirter through the half- 
opened door and the hulk of his model — a girl with a 
face of brass and a brazen-faced beauty to match it. 

That was the last straw. I never could stand 
McWhirter’s hiss and bite. And to hiss at his wife 
before his model ! It was a dirty shame. Everything 
was a dirty shame, and a muddle, with its Mandrills 
and McWhirter s and fogs and Hawklings. And 
Smeeters, too. 

And that brought the girl with the red hair to my 
mind. Smeeter was sick, badly sick. Since my upward 
flight he had attached himself to me in a dumb sort of 
admiring way, and I had got into the way of talking 
with him; and that day he had told me upon my 
pressing him that he was sick, that he didn’t know 
what to do with himself, and he rather thought he 
would go down to the Thames Embankment and 
finish himself off comfortably. He had been travel- 
ling downhill under the pink illustrateds and other 
things, and to aggravate matters there had been pecula- 


THE CRY IN THE NIGHT 


347 


tions from the petty cash. Of course, his talk about 
finishing himself off was all nonsense, but still there 
it was. He had cried, too, and he had to see a doctor 
and was afraid. So I had thought of Aase Wilde, 
and it was a good excuse to see her about that irrita- 
tion of mine — and there was a manuscript I wanted 
to show her. 

Mickey sat in Miss Ella’s old room with his hands 
folded on his lap, his big head set in the corner, 
dreaming. He always sat like that except when 
patients came, when he went to his own particular 
room under the slates — my old room. 

Aase Wilde was not there. 

Here at least the fog had been shut out. The green 
curtains were closely drawn. The fire burned bright. 
The oil lamp, for she would never have the incan- 
descent of Fear Street, glowed bountifully. I felt as 
I so often felt when there — that here was a haven of 
rest from the City. 

And then she was standing behind me near the fire. 
She always came and went silently, uncannily. There 
came her little amused laugh at my surprise. And 
with the laugh, and the sight of her, there sprang up 
in me as there had often sprung up before, that feel- 
ing of opposition, of rebellion, of irritation. I forgot 
Smeeter; I forgot my loneliness. I wanted to fight 
this girl. Why did she laugh like that?” 

“What are you laughing at?” I asked abruptly. 

“At you,” she said frankly. 

“What is there funny about me?” 

“Oh, so many things. Your frock-coat for in- 
stance. . . She stopped provokingly. 

“. . . the garb of respectability,” she said, twining 
her slender arms behind her back, “of Big Business.” 


348 


PASSION 


She could say “Big Business” in so irritating a way 
that it sometimes was a wonder I didn't throw some- 
thing at her. 

“ What's the matter with Big Business?” I asked, 
as I had asked a score of times before. 

“Oh, everything,” she said, smilingly. 

“ 'Everything’s' nothing,” I said. 

“What's that manuscript you have there?” she 
asked, inconsequent. 

“Oh, don’t mind* the manuscript,” I retorted. 
“What's the matter with Big Business? That's what 
I want to know.” She should not wriggle out of this 
as she had so often done before. 

“You, for example,” she said. 

“What's the matter with me?” 

“Have you had your tea?” she asked, tangential, 
“for if you haven't I won't speak to you. You're such 
a bear when you haven’t had your tea, though you 
hate to admit the influence of food. Sit down there. 
Mickey, the kettle.” 

And she would not speak to me until I had eaten 
some of the bread and butter and drunk some of the 
tea she gave me, even though I tried to tell her some- 
thing about Smeeter to turn her. I drank under com- 
pulsion. I was strangling to ... to convince, to 
to devastate her, or something. And so I burst into 
a eulogy of Big Business; the joy in the fight; the 
passion of it. I told her of the operation we had just 
carried through; juggled with millions like a conjurer; 
and gave her to understand perhaps more than was 
strictly necessary that I was somebody in the City. 

I let myself go, talking not only to her, but to my- 
self. It was not only she who wanted convincing. 

She listened to me quietly, too quietly, the tousled 


THE CRY IN THE NIGHT 


349 


hair twined in the slender un jewelled fingers, under 
which I could feel the eyes smouldering. I could see 
the high shoulders shrugging themselves under the 
tiny ears, the gleam of the pink flesh through the 
blouse she wore, the beaded shoes that came out 
from under the hem of her green dress — she was very 
fond of green — which contrasted itself with the 
bronze of her hair. When I had finished, silent to my 
questioning, she straightened herself up, and still look- 
ing into the fire put her hands behind the back of her 
head in the way that she had. 

In that moment, when I felt I had really made some 
impression, she began to laugh — a little glug-glug in 
the throat. My irritation, which had died away under 
the flow of my words, erected itself again. Mickey, 
his head in the corner, was asleep, dreaming his own 
dreams. 

“I am still asking you what you have got that manu- 
script for?” 

“What has my manuscript to do with what I have 
been saying?” I countered. 

“I am still asking what you have got that manu- 
script for?” she returned evenly, looking at me seri- 
ously — and she could look very serious when she 
chose. 

“I brought it to show it to you,” I said. “And there 
is that matter of Smeeter.” 

“Oh, what is Smeeter?” she said pleasantly. “What 
are half dozen Smeeters? Smeeter is only a cog in 
the wheels of Big Business, you know. You have 
said it yourself. If you begin to think of the Smeeters, 
what becomes of Big Business?” 

“But We must think about Smeeter. It is a very 
bad case. And Big Business isn’t everything.” 


350 PASSION 

“I rather gathered from your Song of Solomon just 
novr that it was.” 

“I want to talk about Smeeter,” I said, wrathful. 
She was quietly indifferent. 

“I know nothing about Big Business, only what you 
have told me. But I think I understand your Mr. 
Mandrill, whose name I am always seeing and hear- 
ing. And who’s going to talk about Smeeter when 
we can talk about Mandrill?” 

Was she laughing at me? Yet her face had never 
been more serious. 

“And then there was Art, you know, with a capital 
*A.’ We used to talk about art, didn’t we? But we 
don’t talk about art any more. What is art to Big 
Business? If it comes to that, what is anything to 
Big Business? 

“Everything must bow the knee to Big Business. 
The aristocracy has already bowed the knee to Baal, 
or shall we say, to Mammon? the Bourgeoisie, that 
is, the middlemen, the hucksters and traders, has bowed 
to him through the centuries. There is only the 
Democracy left. And who cares for the ugly Democ- 
racy, the ugly, uneducated, dull Democracy?” 

I had never heard Aase Wilde speak like this. I 
had always thought of her as the silent girl. 

“You talk like The Man in the Red Cap,” I said, the 
“Cyclops” leaders running hazily through my brain. 

“Do I?” she said, indifferently. And she looked as 
though over my head. 

“Can you imagine anything dirtier than the De- 
mocracy — anything more uninteresting than Bill 
Swipes and his wife? I visit them every day; they 
visit me. They live in dirty unventilated dwellings, 
and would throw a bathroom in your teeth if you 


THE CRY IN THE NIGHT 


351 


offered it to them. They eat with their knives, when 
they have anything to eat — sometimes with their 
fingers; and their children are fermentation beds for 
measles and scarlatina and other diseases of the people. 
He is a miserable, unconscious fellow, is Bill. I know 
him.” 

“But I believe in the working man,” I said, gran- 
diloquently, finding in that moment many things re- 
solved in my mind. I would be a champion of 
Democracy. “It is not his fault if he is ignorant. 
And he’s developing, anyhow. He has his meetings 
and his demonstrations and his Trade Unions. But 
what’s this got to do with Big Business?” 

“Bill Swipes is an ignorant man. Demos is only 
a body without a brain. He doesn’t know the mean- 
ing of his own Democracy. Burr-r-r-r!” And she 
shuddered as though she felt the touch of Bill. 

“Look at him in his meetings. Like a great dumb 
led beast. Look at him in his processions — proces- 
sions that a handful of soldiers could go through, like 
steel through mud.” 

“But the soldiers are the Democracy, too,” I put in, 
“and they are effective enough.” 

“Yes, but they never become effective until they 
have Big Business to organize them.” She laughed 
irritatingly. I was silent. 

“I can understand the contempt of your Mandrills, 
of Big Business for the Democracy. I can understand 
the impatience of organisation and efficiency with in- 
efficiency and what I will call unorganizableness. The 
survival of the fittest of which everyone is talking 
sounds right and possibly is right. If Democracy 
wishes to counter Plutocracy, that Plutocracy which 
is the most terribly efficient thing in the world, De- 


352 


PASSION 


mocracy must prove itself the more efficient and give 
up talking about the Rights of Man. The Rights of 
Man are what he can win with his brain and his 
money-bags and hold with the cold iron. Mandrill 
is right. You have as good as said it yourself in your 
eulogy of Big Business. 

“And then there is your MSS., you know” — and 
now she was laughing. 

“Oh, damn my MSS'. !” 

“Damn it by all means,” she returned coolly. “Don’t 
trouble to apologise. Damn it by all means. Let’s 
have Big Business.” Her skirts rustled softly as she 
drew them down from her knees. 

I was humiliated, miserable — countered by this girl 
who was a year younger than I, a girl who seemed 
to be playing a game with me. Beaten with my own 
weapons. Her elusiveness was exasperating. I could 
never say what she really thought and meant. 

“It is nonsense to talk about manuscripts. Why, 
Mandrill can buy up all the artists in the world . . . 
or nearly all,” she added. “If you write, you get 
more kicks than halfpence; if you go into Big Busi- 
ness you give the kicks, and get not only halfpence 
but half-sovereigns. Only,” she added quietly, “you 
can’t eat your cake and have it. You can’t have Big 
Business and writing.” 

“Why not?” I asked. Yet I knew I only asked it 
to get something to say — breathing space. 

“Let us be as logical as your Mandrill. This is an 
old fight that has shown itself in a hundred forms 
down the ages. It is perhaps the eternal fight. It is 
the fight of Money and Art, Power and Art, put it 
as you will, and so far, Power has won and looks as 
though it always would win. To take the other side 


THE CRY IN THE NIGHT 


353 


is to battle for a forlorn hope. But the fight goes on, 
for the Artist and the Copper Man are enemies, deadly 
enemies. The form it is taking to-day is the fight of 
the Plutocracy versus the Democracy — the Plutocracy 
of Power versus the Democracy of Art, for the prole- 
tarian is the only Artist — can be the only Artist. 
Personally, I should prefer to be on the winning side. 
Wouldn’t you?” 

And she stuck her nose, that strong little nose, into 
the air, insolently. 

“After all, Power is the only thing,” she went on. 
“It is the thing that men fight for, die for. Your 
Christs will always be beaten by your Mammons. 
Christianity has failed because it is not a religion of 
money, power. It has only succeeded where it has be- 
come such.” 

The fire was burning low. Mickey breathed gently 
in the corner. The fog seemed to drift through the 
door and through the closed curtains. I wanted to 
stand up and fight these things she had said. It was 
not true that Power was everything, that the De- 
mocracy was contemptible and unconscious. I found 
new voices, new powers, and then I was silent. It was 
/ who had stood up for Big Business. It was 1 who 
had fought the Artist. 

“And there was Smeeter,” she said, coming back 
from where she had walked to pull the curtains apart 
to stare out into the fog, and looking down at me. It 
was as though the eyes were smouldering behind a 
veil. 

“Smeeter is sick,” I said. “Very sick.” 

“Has he been burning himself at the flame of this 
splendid passion of which you have been speaking?” 
she asked. 


354 


PASSION 


“Smeeter is sick, very sick/’ I repeated again, 
lamely. “And I would not sneer at passion. You 
know there is such a thing.” 

“Yes, I know,” she said, and was silent. Then — 
“Passion is the thing behind Mandrill — the thing be- 
hind the girl who had these rooms of whom Mrs. S. 
has told me — the thing behind Park Lane and Golgo- 
tha House as it was the thing behind Calvary — and 
you . . . and me,” she added after a moment, “. . . 
and it is the thing that is working as we speak behind 
the closed doors of Pear Street. . . .” She stood 
there, her lips parted, looking at me with that strange 
remote look as though she saw through me into some- 
thing. The place was very still. I could hear my 
heart beating. 

A scream cut the stillness like the tearing of silk. 
It pierced the fog, long drawn out, died away, then 
stopped abruptly as though it had been cut off. 

Aase Wilde still looked at me, listening. Mickey 
still slept. I could not have moved for a king’s 
ransom. It was as though we were in a house of 
enchantments. 

Then there was the gentle pad-pad of slippered feet 
on the passage and the door opened. 

It was Mrs. McWhirter. She stood there in the mel- 
low of the lamp, her brown hair braided into the two 
heavy plaits that came down either side of a face 
which more than ever looked like the original of all the 
Indian maidens. She stood there a moment, looking 
calmly, almost sweetly, upon us. Then she said 
quietly . . . 

“I have killed him.” 

We did not speak. Mr. Clarence’s high tenor came 
through the door, singing “I’ll bring thee pearls of 


THE CRY IN THE NIGHT 


355 


Araby and tales of fair Cashmere. . . A door 
opened. Something was scuttling down the stairs, 
like a rat from a sinking ship. 

Then Aase Wilde had sprung to life. She had 
gripped a case of instruments and had run out, with 
me after her. We found the door open. A tin lamp 
with a reflector was burning on the wall, showing 
the little artist, no longer hissing, lying on his back 
in his blue jumper, his head bent back curiously as 
though on a hinge, a woman’s petticoat hanging near 
him on a chair, whilst the little boy was clinging to 
the broken neck saying “Papa! . . . Papa!” 

As we stood there I heard something behind me, 
and there in the open door was Mauri, a little yellow 
figure, grinning as he looked at the thing on the floor. 


XXXIV 


I MAKE A FOOL OF MYSELF 

Many months had run by since that night when we 
had seen Mrs. McWhirter led away between the two 
policemen. “It was a case with ameliorating circum- 
stances, ” the judge had said in his summing up; “the 
story of a coarse model; flagrante delicto ; something 
for which the French had reserved a special name — 
nn crime passionnel , something which seemed to be 
bred in houses like that of Fear Street. But still the 
law had to be observed and he could not feel it con- 
sistent with his duty if he passed upon her a sentence 
of less than ten years . . and so on and so on. 
And so justice was done and the law satisfied. 

But this thing had had consequences for me. It 
marked, as so many other things in Fear Street and 
before Fear Street had marked, a stage in my life, a 
stage of transition, of definition. It was when Aase 
Wilde had returned to her room and to the girl who 
sat there looking quietly on Mickey whilst he slept, 
smiling and singing to herself — singing as I hope 
never again to hear a woman sing. 

She had looked at her a moment, and then the little 
proud face had changed, the veil had fallen away from 
the eyes, and she had thrown herself on her knees by 
the side of the smiling woman and was straining her 
to her breast, impulsively, passionately, as a mother 
might her child, pulling down the poor smiling face 
356 


I MAKE A FOOL OF MYSELF 357 


to the tiny, rounded bosoms that showed themselves 
waiting. And with the falling of that veil there fell 
another. I knew in that moment that for good or 
ill this girl with the red hair was part of me and I of 
her. 

There was nothing of wonder about this moment, 
nothing impulsive, certainly nothing passionate; noth- 
ing of that other tawny-haired woman — the Girl in 
the Window. This thing irradiated me, quietly, 
surely. It was as though the blood had receded from 
my heart and then was coming back again drop by 
drop, an inflow permeating me as with a subtle essence. 
There was something of birth in it — of creation. 

It was not at all as I had pictured what men called 
passion. But I knew it as surely, as certainly, as 
though an angel of light had announced it to me. It 
was my annunciation. 

I put this thing down within me as deeply as I could. 
It was the dearest of secrets. The last person in the 
world who should know it was Aase herself. I was 
a dominating animal as I have shown, who always 
demanded return for all outgivings. But the essential 
of this thing was that it should demand nothing in 
return, that nothing should be given me in return — 
that its object should be unattainable, remote. In a 
sense, and without straining, it did not concern Aase 
as a person. It was something that stood behind Aase. 

It made no difference in my relations to her except 
that I hid myself from her in the months that followed 
as far as I could. I have heard that animals about 
to die hide themselves away from their fellows, and 
die alone. It was like that. I wanted to be alone with 
this, and I found, as I had found it as a child, that 
this thing had death in it. But it had life, too. 


358 


PASSION 


It waked with me ; it slept with me ; I took it into 
the Cave with me. It walked with me; it dreamed 
with me, just as that other thing — or was it the same 
thing ? — had done when I was a child ; and there were 
times when I wanted to stand up and shout it aloud. 
I wanted to tell it to the whole world. I think I would 
have done so if it had not meant also telling it to 
Aase herself. 

I felt that this thing had exorcised for ever that 
other thing which was its ghost, that the new light 
which infiltrated the secret passages of my being had 
driven forth its darkened counterpart. 

But even as I thought it, I was to discover once 
more that this thing, the irresolvable, was not to be 
resolved — either then or ever. For with its newer 
revelation I had become intensely receptive — receptive 
both to good and evil — plastic to the impress of all 
things about me. It had fretted my nerves outwards 
like filaments to catch the slightest message from the 
world around me, gave me the lust to life, as its 
•counterpart, the thing of the sun-flashed blackened 
corridors, had done when I was a boy. And I found 
that in my dreams at night I was still more receptive, 
more nervous, than in my waking moments — both 
better and worse. It was as though I were in transi- 
tion, living betwixt two worlds — a sleeping and a 
waking — an aurelia, shivering, receptive, in its cocoon, 
but sensing the sunlight that grew steadily from about 
me. 

But with this receptiveness there had come creative- 
ness. The impulses that registered themselves upon 
the trembling filaments of my nerves, microphonous, 
cried aloud for expression. Once more I found my- 
self flung back again into my writing, burning up the 


I MAKE A FOOL OF MYSELF 359 


midnight oil, niggard, snatching every moment from 
my work at the Cave, where we were entering upon 
the last operation, that against Squid. 

Only now, instead of spilling power in half-formed, 
unfinished efforts, I had set myself down to the work 
of making a book, an idea, which like so many other 
ideas, I owed to Aase Wilde. At the beginning I 
would throw down my pen in despair, but under the 
succession of impulses which surged within me at this 
time, I kept driving back at my manuscript, until I 
could sit doWn night after night to my steady three 
or four hours* work as though I were in Golgotha 
House. I had learnt the power to concentrate. 

At each of these impulses, that light of which I 
have spoken grew stronger — I seemed to see things 
and people, meticulous, as it grew, and then it was as 
though great searchlights beat on all things about me, 
until finally in the revealing, I seemed to be one with 
all the world. I found people better and worse than 
I had thought ; for the first time I began to like these 
people who moved about me, once as shadows, now 
as creatures of flesh and blood like to myself. I 
wanted to do something for them — to save them, and 
myself. Only in one thing, Big Business, did I find 
myself in opposition — an opposition Which each day 
resolved itself into something more sullen, steady, 
conscious. 

In my new exaltation, and my desire to save the 
world, I had tried to begin with Smeeter. Smeeter 
with his ringed eyes and callow face, who seemed to 
be curving over, drying up more and more each day 
as though eaten by some interior flame. But Smeeter 
wouldn’t be saved. 

There were so many complications — those petty 


360 


PASSION 


pash peculations in the effort “to keep up appearances” 
in Big Business — “What was a fellow to do?” he had 
said — and from them bad company, and worse. 

It took me many months of effort and cajolery to 
bring him to the sticking point, to get him on to the 
doorstep of Fear Street. But he had promised. 

I had gone upstairs to tell Aase Wilde that he was 
coming that evening. It was an evening of late sum- 
mer, and as was sometimes the way in Fear Street, 
the afternoon sun came glowing through the windows, 
an effulgence that filled the room and the face and 
hair of the girl who sat on the floor, her knees drawn 
up to her chin as she clasped them with her long, 
slender arms. She looked so like a spirit of the sun- 
light as she sat there, her back to the guard that ran 
around the empty fireplace, that I involuntarily stopped 
short to gaze at her. 

“Well, what do you want?” she asked rubbing her 
nose softly backwards and forwards against her knees, 
as she looked up at me provokingly. But she could 
not irritate me now as she once could. 

“You never come to see me now. Why don’t you ?” 
And now she had lifted her head and was staring at 
me with that bold veiled look of hers. “Perhaps 
you’re afraid of Mickey; or is it Jesper?” 

But she could not annoy me. “It’s Smeeter,” I 
said. “He’s coming this evening.” 

And now she was listening. That slight nervous 
tremor went through her body as though it were listen- 
ing. “Tell me about Smeeter,” she said. 

I tried to tell her. It was easy to tell this girl 
everything— in a way, only that as I told her the 
story of Smeeter, it was as though I were telling her 
my own story, reconstructing it from my own experi- 


I MAKE A FOOL OF MYSELF 361 


ence of life in the big city. I found myself constantly 
dropping into little personal confessions, which made 
me blush hotly. Once even I, said “I.” 

As she listened, the face was luminous with under- 
standing. Many times in the past I had thought this 
silent, queer girl guessed many things about me — a 
thought that was at times nearly intolerable. She 
seemed now, as she so often did, so much older than 
I, in the way that a girl is always older than a man, 
especially when the man is in love with her. I know 
that I painted a picture of high lights and deep shad- 
ows, a picture touched with the passion of self. I 
found myself making excuses for Smeeter — or was it 
for myself? — only that I was able to tell with pride, 
consciousful, that I had been saved from the grosser 
things, from the darker places. I had imperceptibly 
passed from Smeeter to myself, lover-egotist that I 
was, she still with her head sunk on her knees listening 
upwards with her eyes like a hound, when Mickey, 
who had been posted on the doorstep to overcome the 
recalcitrant Smeeter, came in, bringing his captive 
much as though he were a prisoner of war; and hav- 
ing left him, went out and shut the door. 

He stood there, the gaunt boy — somehow one al- 
ways thought of him as a boy though he was nearly 
my own age — his head hanging, the eyes staring out 
from their rings in solemn fearfulness. He fingered 
his bowler hat nervously, and there was a dank sweat 
on his forehead where it caught the gleam of the sun. 
The face turned anxiously, dumbly, from one to the 
other. 

But Aase had risen quietly and taken him by the 
hand. The boy flushed scarlet. I only realised in 
that moment that the really vicious man is the most 


362 


PASSION 


delicate, the shyest of all men in his relations with 
women. She spoke to him naturally as though she 
had always known him and as if he had come to pay 
an afternoon call. 

I had gone out, closing the door after me. 

Half an hour went by. The place was silent but 
for the crying of the children that tumbled up and 
down the doorsteps leading into the street. Then I 
heard Aase’s door open, close very quietly, and some- 
thing that shambled down the stairs. 

When I came into the room Aase was standing 
there in her usual attitude looking out into the sunset. 
As she turned I caught the red sparks that showed 
themselves in the smouldering eyes. 

But the face was steady enough that turned itself 
to me. 

‘Well?” I said. “Is it bad?” 

“It is too late,” she said simply. 

And then this queer girl of cold high-tensioned 
nerves, did something which at the moment seemed 
incredible — something that unnerved me. The two 
fine hands had come up to the eyes, the high shoulders 
had moved slightly, convulsively, and she had begun 
to sob, the tears coursing down between her fingers. 
It unstrung me. I seemed to lose my head. 

“Aase. Aase,” I said. “Don't. Oh, don't!” 

I don't know what happened then, but I was telling 
her that I loved her and that I could not bear to see 
her cry and . . . 

The hands had come down. The eyes were looking 
at me, breathless, as though the veils had dropped for 
a moment. But they were steady, too steady. The 
head was held proudly up. And even the tears seemed 
to have dried themselves. 


I MAKE A FOOL OF MYSELF 363 


“Don’t!” she said. “Don’t! You must not speak 
to me like that.” 

And with the words and the poise of the head and 
the eyes, something inside me had closed up. I re- 
membered that I was a man, and scorned. I saw black. 
The passion of my words, of my love, had .turned 
into something other, into a passion of hate. And I 
was talking, talking, possessed: 

“You are right,” I said. “I won’t. It is you and 
the women like you who make the Smeeters of the 
world. The women who only know passion as a titil- 
lation of the spirit, as a whispering behind closed 
doors, a touching of hands — the women between whom 
and the men there is a gulf fixed, a gulf unbridgeable 
between the sexes. Smeeter’s story might have been 
mine — nearly was mine — part of the story I told you 
was not only Smeeter’s but mine and is the story of a 
million others as I speak. You ! What can you under- 
stand? You! Why you’re a good woman!” 

It was the passion of hate — of the lust to destroy. 
It was the rape of the woman with the sponge again ; 
it was the girl in the stained glass window; it was 
Sherlingham and the Cave. Running water and damp 
earth, and the moonlight very far away. 

She had listened to me, her glance unwavering. 
Then she said, cryptic: 

“I wish I could forget myself and be a woman and 
give myself to you . . . but that would not save you 
. . . or me,” she added after a moment as though 
she were whispering to herself. 


XXXV 


CREATION 

I had shut myself up in my room, wounded, desperate. 
That was all over. I would never see this girl with 
the red hair again. God save me from her and from 
all “good,” “nice,” women. But Aase Wilde was not 
a “nice” woman. Even in this moment I knew that. 
She was a new type of woman, a disturbing, irritating 
type. But she was a type to get away from. For she 
was unattainable. 

I would go back to my old friends the streets — the 
streets I had forsaken for so long. They at least had 
never hurt me. I turned to them with the homing 
instinct of a bird of passage. They and their de- 
mocracy had always been satisfying to me — and now 
I was lonely again as I had been in the long years 
before, a loneliness with something added, a dull 
throbbing pain. 

But when I found myself once more in the long 
London nights searching the old familiar things; los- 
ing myself in the fogs of the Euston Road or passing 
along the places of the high lights, I felt that the 
virtue had gone out of them — something had touched 
the hem of London's night garments. 

Those lights were beating down nakedly upon the 
men and women and things that moved and had their 
being upon the London pavements. The passion-play 
364 


CREATION 


365 


that dragged itself across the pavements was no longer 
the passion of the hours under the high white lights, 
it was dead passion — the passion of the dead things. I 
could see the skeleton behind the rouge; the deadness 
behind the eyes; catch the broken heart behind the 
jcareless laugh. These careless men were not careless, 
but care-ful. The spin of the Circus was still a merry- 
go-round but a merry-go-round with the Man on the 
White Horse turning with it. There were no secrets 
here — the glamour had vanished, leaving but the 
garish terror of the place. 

Here I had tried to escape the girl with the red 
hair. I did not ask myself what I had tried to escape 
— it was enough that I wanted to forget this girl and 
the passion of an hour. And here under the white 
lights, merciless, that beat themselves out, I found her 
with me, bringing the dull pain to my heart. Her 
laugh, ironic, would come to me across the city pave- 
ments; I would see her face behind the rouged faces 
about me ; catch the tumult of her hair in the vista of 
heads; see the high shoulders shrugging themselves 
daintily before me on the white stones; catch the 
tenuous stride. 

For the girl with the red hair was down here 
amongst these people. I found her, or the thing I 
felt for her, in all things about me, inter penetrant. 
She, or the thing that was behind her, was part of 
everything good and bad. She was the girl in the 
stained-glass window and little Sheilah — the “good” 
woman and the girl of the street. It would sometimes 
come to me that there was no such thing as good and 
bad — that both were part of something behind them 
— of the thing behind Aase . . . but that seemed 
madness. 


366 


PASSION 


And when I found I could not escape her, that for 
good or evil she was part of me and of life, I went 
back to her. She received me exactly as she always 
did, sitting on the floor with her face on the high 
slender knees, and that little muzzling motion of the 
nose upon her silken skirts. But she had never seemed 
so remote, so unattainable, unattainable in the way I 
had always thought of women. 

She did not laugh at me or ask me questions — she 
had the gift of bounteous silence — but I would catch 
her watching me with that veiled puzzled expression 
I knew so well, now with something eager in it, 
questioning. 

Once she smiled at me, friendly. It was when I 
told her I was working on my book — her book in a 
way. 

The Cave, Fear Street, Aase Wilde herself, were 
so many hammers, to hammer me out upon the anvil 
of experience. The successive blows of fortune, 
whether good or bad, had not softened me, made me 
malleable, they had struck fire into the metal of my 
being, given me hardness and endurance. The last 
shock, that of my refusal, had more than anything 
else driven me back to my writing, to my book, upon 
which I was working hardly, closely, reading the chap- 
ters to Aase Wilde as I wrote them — altering, check- 
ing, and more and more falling back upon her. All 
the energy, power, passion if one will, I had spilt on 
the highways and byways of the city, down those dark- 
ened sun-flashed corridors of the past — all that vitalis- 
ing fluid which had passed out from me through a 
hundred and one conductors, was now stored up, 
turned inwards, concentrated upon the work in hand. 

This book, the story of my Golgotha House life in 


CREATION 


367 


London, I wrote much as I set this down, putting 
down things as they were, turning neither to the right 
hand nor to the left, leaving nothing to imagination. 
For I dared not imagine. 

As it developed under my hand, I developed with 
it. I was finding expression of myself — the crooked 
places were being made plain, the tangled paths 
straight, and the white lights were beating in on those 
darkened porridors of long ago, the darkness of sup- 
pression had gone — creation had come. 

Creation — that was the vent-hole, that was the 
breathing thing, of life, the thing that opened up the 
life channels for the breath of the thing behind. I 
was creating. And in the creation the pain at my 
heart grew less, I found myself more and more merg- 
ing, commingling with all things about me, and then 
growing, pulsating, in a frenzy of synthesis to be one 
with life; in which even Aase Wilde, like myself, 
seemed subordinate, contributory. With it all I was 
less impulsive, less frantic, than I had been in those 
first days after I knew what this girl was to me — 
less passionate, but more passionated. 

Yet with this there came new difficulties. As I 
wrote and as the grey dawn of definement came, I 
found Big Business more remote, more impossible, 
despite my daily immersion in it. It was as though 
I had written, had thought myself into a new world, 
where the Mandrills were a sort of extinct saurian, 
in which the struggle and passion of Big Business was 
the child's play of idiot giants. I found growing in 
myself, as there was growing in countless others at 
this time, a dim comprehension of the new forces that 
were arraying themselves one against the other— the 
forces of which Mandrill, of which Aase Wilde, had 


368 


PASSION 


spoken . . . only I could not even now decide upon 
which side I stood, or whether I stood at all — whether 
I did not stand somewhere between. I suppose Dem- 
ocracy was in the air and, like the measles, it was in- 
fectious; or perhaps I had it in my blood, had never 
lost it from the time when as a baby I had been taught 
my duty to my caste, when something had been prick- 
ing at me that would have been love for the people 
if it had not been hate and contempt also — only now 
the hate and contempt had almost gone. For here was 
I, knowing, as Aase Wilde once pleasantly observed, 
a little less about Bill Swipes than the dodo, with a 
sort of blind instinct believing in Bill, seeing in Bill 
the natural corrective to Big Business, and, in a way, 
regarding Bill as the saviour of the world — that Bill 
Swipes upon whom Aase never ceased to pour her 
scorn, putting Bill upon the operating table and an- 
atomising him into a thing of bone and flesh, with- 
out much nerve or brain. 

For we had gone back to our talks about Bill Swipes 
and his wife — about art and the artist — and Big Busi- 
ness and the world. I could never really find out 
what Aase actually thought, but I would think that 
she like myself stood somewhere between, only that 
when I would let myself go, criticising more and more 
Big Business, showing up the weaknesses, the treach- 
eries, of Big Business, which at least I thought I un- 
derstood — though this girl with her amazing effront- 
ery would tell me that I knew as little about what it 
meant as any man in it except Mandrill — she would 
pull me up short, ask me what I would put in its place ; 
and I, always a destructive animal, would nose about 
blindly when it came to the constructive, leaving her 
to laugh at me. But somehow I never thought of 


CREATION 369 

asking her what she would put in its place, if she 
would put anything. 

It was always she who cold-douched me. I would 
talk of Democracy with a big “D,” much as people 
were beginning to talk about it everywhere, without 
any clear understanding as to what I really meant. 
I would speak of the Rights of Man in my half-di- 
gested way like any ranter in Hyde Park and of op- 
pression and confiscation and “exploitation” — one of 
those end of the century words much in favour. And 
she with the little smile which had come back, would 
draw her knees up daintily to her nose where she sat 
on the cushioned floor, and would show with a cheer- 
ful minuteness the weaknesses of Demos, his beer, his 
brutality, his stupidity. She would call him a “big 
baby,” a favourite expression of hers, and once when 
I burst out as though something were driving inside 
me. that Demos yet would save the world, she added, 
as though to herself . . . “and even he is crucified, 
but he cannot come down from his cross — he doesn’t 
know the way.” 

I had told the publisher that I had put my blood 
into “High Finance,” and I had, and they say that 
blood, like murder, will out. At any rate, in the 
middle of all this, the book came out, not under my 
own name but under a nom de plume. I was still 
uncertain about Big Business. 

Whatever else pould be said about it, it caused a 
sensation. It was savagely slashed and cut and 
hacked. It was as savagely misquoted. It was dis- 
cussed and quarrelled over, was said to be an exag- 
geration and an understatement ; and in a word it was 
a nine days’ wonder. 

But for me who had awakened that September 


370 


PASSION 


morning to find myself the man of the- hour, a fleet- 
ing hour, I can only say that the sight of my pen- 
name on this book meant more to me than all the 
triumphs of the Cave. This thing was creation — 
those things of the Cave, negation. It broadened and 
knitted that synthesis of life which had come to me 
with my love for Aase Wilde — it made the universe 
sing about me — made me one with all things; and 
with the people with whom it brought me in con- 
tact, and with Aase Wilde, I began to realise the new 
synthesis, and discovered, astonishingly, that I was 
not alone — that it was being discovered by number- 
less others about me. 

There might be those gods of Madame Angelica, 
but if those existed, other gods existed too— gods of 
the things eternal that had used my passion to this 
thing, which was the negation of that other . . . and 
part of it. Then it was that passion came to me as 
power — creation; as something both good and bad — 
the same thing whether exalted or depraved. One 
thing whether good or bad ran through all. There 
was no good and no bad. 


XXXVI 


THE MAN ON THE SCAFFOLD 

So I stood after the bringing out of “High Finance,” 
as we entered upon our last operation in the Cave in 
which I had been placed for a leading role, standing 
next to Mandrill himself. 

Mandrill had spoken to me about “High Finance,” 
saying that it was a masterly exposition of Big Busi- 
ness and that the leading character, Max, had obvi- 
ously been taken from himself. His conclusion, how- 
ever, I had not foreseen. It was that Squid had 
employed one of the American writers to pen it so as 
to arouse suspicion of his (Mandrill’s) own operations 
in Great Britain. “I would give a thousand pounds,” 
he said, “to know the author. But he can write, and 
he knows Big Business.” 

Vogel and Nathan had exchanged witticisms about 
the book, but I thought uneasily, for they were both 
in it. It had created a good deal of attention and 
people almost unconsciously associated my Max with 
Mandrill, and the “Cyclops” in a half column leader 
it had given to the book, had referred to “the masked 
operations now going on in our midst, which, if the 
Government did its duty, could be scotched in the 
outset and the men, or man, behind them put in prison 
for the protection of society.” 

Still, the little investor like his big brother was not 
371 


372 


PASSION 


likely to see the book, and if he saw it, did not trouble 
his little hard head about it. Mandrill had rightly 
said that it could have no more effect on Big Business 
than a stone thrown into the sea — there was a ripple 
and then all was as before, with the big fish eating 
the little. The world of commerce had something 
else to do than to worry about books, with that uneasy 
stirring in the whirlpools of speculation which was 
now making itself felt deeply, as Mandrill marshalled 
his prodigious forces and got them into position. 

He was as he now said ready to attack the enemy 
in the deeps where he lurked . . . “for this, Tempest, 
is going to be like the fights of the future — a war 
invisible — a sort of war under the waters.” Like a 
wise general he had inspected every detail, got each 
engine of war into position, and not neglected the 
smallest thing of personnel or materiel. For all he 
knew, the ground before him was mined and counter- 
mined. He had his scouts and his reconnaissances — 
his engines of striking and of entanglement, his tor- 
pedoes and his steel nets. Beside and behind his 
engines of destruction he had stacked his piles of 
ammunition, golden ammunition, for as he told me, 
the heavy artillery of finance would be the decisive 
factor in this as in future Wars. 

His secret service, that vast service which had come 
into being almost of itself, was moving throughout 
the deeps of the New World. Instructions had been 
issued to the brokers at home, the press advised. 
Nothing had been overlooked. 

Despite “High Finance,” I worked as hard as any 
in these preparations, of which I could no more see 
the end than “High Finance” itself. I was not yet 
clear about the end of these things, and with my 


THE MAN ON THE SCAFFOLD 373 


writing for the moment out of the way, Big Business 
still had its call for me, strident, compelling. I began 
to think I £ould see the end or something of the end 
of these things, but I did not know how to get my 
head out of it. I could not think with all this whirl- 
ing and stirring about me. I also was caught up in 
the machine. 

My book, my realization through my book, and, 
despite her criticism, through the woman who was 
behind it, had shown me something of the end of these 
things — but everybody was in it. “We all had to 
live.” If I didn’t do these things someone else would. 
Defeat meant annihilation. It was the instinct of 
self-defence. In a sense all business was unmoral, for 
all business meant buying in the cheapest and selling 
in the dearest market. I could not hope to fight a 
world — especially the world of Big Business. I at 
least knew something of the forces arrayed against 
me. Even Aase Wilde herself laughed at the idea, 
had shown the futility of standing against the power 
of gold, and had sneered at the only thing that was 
putting up a fight of any kind against it — democracy, 
which as she said was a great baby. So I went on. 

It was a foggy morning of early January as I 
walked down Golgotha Place for the final secret 
meeting of Mandrill before he launched his stroke. 
The big policeman at the entrance to the place had 
given me his customary salute — Barclay, the blind 
messenger, had nosed about for me and touched his 
bowler humbly. In my mind I could see the two giant 
commissionaires down the vista of the Place already 
standing at attention waiting for me to enter. There 
was a rush, a tumblement of hoofs on the macadam, 
and Mandrill’s carriage swlept past me, the chestnuts 


374 


PASSION 


champing and foaming, for like Jehu he always drove 
furiously. There was a scatter of the fog, and a fig- 
ure materialised under the horses, scrambling out of 
the way at the last moment. The carriage rolled tri- 
umphantly to the great doors, and Hawkling, for it 
was Hawkling, a bedraggled object in that fog, drew 
himself to one side and looked at me, silent, reproach- 
ful, as he always did. 

There came to my ears the tink-tink of something, 
clinking sharply through the mist. 

Well-dressed, well set-up men were streaming past 
me in ones and twos, the men of Big Business whom 
I knew. Carriages rolled up and set down their 
freights. All the world seemed to be entering the 
Cave that day — pouring in for the final struggle which 
was to place Mandrill astride the globe, or send him 
to what an American paper had called “e-ter-nal 
smash.” 

It was a feverish world that swept past. Men who 
sensed the big things to come and set their eyes as 
though on some distant horizon. Little investors, 
wondering what it was all about, tailed after them — 
and there were Skinsole and Craggs following in the 
wake of Big Business according to custom. Nothing 
could resist the Cave. There lay the millions, the 
gold, that swung the world, which as Mandrill had 
said was bound to swing the world. And still the 
tinkle came to me out of the fog. 

And as I peered along the Place, a single shaft of 
sun pierced down through the fog, lighting up the 
grey fa$ade of Golgotha House. It struck down in 
a single golden shaft, struck upon a scaffolding that 
stood over the portals on which a corduroyed work- 
man was taking out the brickwork, striking it away 


THE MAN ON THE SCAFFOLD 375 


brick by brick, the clink of his tools coming down to 
me as I watched. And then I remembered — a crack 
had shown itself some time before in the front of 
the house. 

He stood there singing to himself — a formidable 
figure of a man with a beard of curling brown, his 
back curved from his daily toil, his sleeved vest hang- 
ing loosely about him. The eyes held themselves to 
their work, and once they looked down as though 
listening, blue eyes with a far-away questioning look 
that seemed to hear something as another carriage 
drove up to the door under him, setting down little 
Madame Angelica. High up there, he hung on his 
scaffolding like an unconscious Christ, with his curly 
brown beard, mild blue eyes, and something chastened, 
softened, in his face as the rays played upon him. 

Then the fog had shut down and he had disap- 
peared. Only the tink-tink of his tools came down 
to me. 

The man stayed with me as I went into the Cave, 
stayed with me through the meeting that followed. 

As I sat there by the side of Mandrill in the Den, 
my eyes rested upon the big men around the table. 
Morkstein was gnawing his moustache darkly, Vogel's 
head was turning on its neck as he looked stealthily 
from face to face. Nathan's white teeth came and 
went under his dyed moustache in gleaming friendli- 
ness. And down near the bottom of the table sat 
little Madame Angelica, her reticule laid before her 
on the crimson table, the mittened jewelled hands play- 
ing with the handle. A queer little figure with the 
smiling face and nose that hooked itself out under the 
poke bonnet from between the stony eyes. 

It was a wonder-storv that Mandrill told. The 


376 


PASSION 


story of a decade. The story of planning and schem- 
ing and plotting. Of organization ruthless — of ad- 
vance mechanical — of centralisation both of man and 
machine, of the living and the dead. The story of 
federation and amalgamation now completed to the 
last link in the golden chain that was to bind the world. 
The story of the binding together of the European 
Copper Interests, of the Copper Combine. Of subor- 
dination and smashing, of secret services and private 
police. Of buying gargantuan not only on the Stock 
Exchanges of Europe and America but by private 
contract. The story of bidding and counterbidding, 
with the toppling rise in copper stocks throughout the 
world quite independent of the value of raw copper 
itself, which, however, had nearly doubled. It was 
the story of experts bought up or frozen out — of Di- 
rectors with handles to their names held neck and 
crop; a story of blood and money. 

“Pm not sure,” he said, “that we haven’t used 
everything in the game, including guns — there was 
that Poldhu strike and the Westerburn affair . . 

— a little voice chirped itself from the end of the 
table . . . “and love.” It was Madame Angelica. 
Mandrill looked towards her and laughed “and love,” 
bowing to her in acknowledgment. The rank and file 
who controlled “not copper, but paper,” he dismissed 
contemptuously with a wave of the hand. 

And through it all I could hear the clink-clink of 
the man on the scaffold. 

And now they were hovering on the edge of cir- 
cumstance, fine-edged, raw-edged, for the work in 
hand. He sketched shadowily the politicians and the 
papers behind them, and painted the tale of the anti- 
Trust legislation which their opponents had talked of 


THE MAN ON THE SCAFFOLD 377 

introducing as it had been introduced in America 
against Squid and his interests and which had failed. 

“Trust legislation!” he said and laughed, showing 
his teeth yellowly. “Competition is competition and 
business is business, and will be to the end of time. 
If they want to kill Big Business they must begin at 
the bottom and not at the top.” 

The story won silence from the meeting, broken 
only now and then by a grunt of satisfaction from 
one of the big smooth-faced men, or by a croak from 
Vogel, who seemed to flap his wings preparatory to 
the feast to come — “the feast of dead men,” as Man- 
drill had said with a fine humour. But there was no 
Earl of Whyburn there. Only the men who counted 
and the one woman. 

And some of the men there gripped themselves 
secretly as the splendid story of power, of accom- 
plishment, spun itself over them. And the eyes of 
others glistened feverishly or glazed themselves. But 
Madame Angelica’s nose hooked itself more strongly 
than ever, her eyes glittered green, and those terrible 
hands of hers clutched at the reticule on the table, 
drawing it into her. 

“Only Squid remains,” came the great voice. “If 
I could not break Squid on the paper markets of the 
world, I would break him on the metal markets. To 
break Squid I would sell raw copper below the cost of 
winning. To break him I would put every copper 
halfpenny I have into the scales, for it is the last 
straw, the last copper helfpenny, that will count in 
the fight before us. I would put the world itself, for 
it is the world itself which is in the scales.” 

But from the outside there came that tink-tink. 
And I could see through Mandrill as he spoke the 


378 


PASSION 


figure of the workingman corduroyed, the man with 
the curling brown beard and the mild blue eyes, tap- 
ping, tapping outside there on the scaffold. It came 
back to me again and again. 

“And when we have mastered Squid,” croaked 
Vogel, “what then?” 

And now he was on his last note. “When we have 
mastered Squid it is not the end of the struggle, for 
struggle here on earth is eternal — it is the price of 
life — it is life. There is one more enemy to van- 
quish, one more enemy to meet in the jungle of life, 
and that is the enemy who to-day is rising above the 
horizon. We have met him already as I have said — 
we met him at Poldhu and at Westerburn — but that 
is only the beginning. He will grow, this enemy — 
will grow until he too will overtop the world, chal- 
lenging its empire with Big Business. But he is un- 
organized, undisciplined, without brain or cunning 
. . . and without gold. These things he will get — 
and sometimes in the getting like a second Samson 
will be shorn of his strength — but despite them we 
will smash him, we will beat him to pulp — and es- 
pecially we will cajole him. He is a big baby.” 

And still the tink-tink came from the outside of the 
house. Tink-tink — tink-tink. . . • 


XXXVII 


THE HIGH MOUNTAIN 

It was night. The meeting was over. The Cave was 
deserted save where a glimmer of light here and there 
showed a belated clerk trying to get ahead of his work. 
The fog had shut down, dead. The tink-tink no longer 
came from the outside of the house. I was alone with 
the big man in the Den. 

The log fire roared up the chimney, for Mandrill 
had a purious liking for big fires. The yellow pall 
blanketed the high windows. He stood there astride 
the bearskin as he had stood that first day, but not so 
expansive, so elastic. The green lights had dulled in 
the eyes, the great shoulders had a forward stoop — 
and I thought, though perhaps it was the shadows 
thrown by the fire, that the expansive mouth had 
drooped, hung a little as though slavering ... a little 
on one side, like a dog that is tired with the hunt. 

For it had been an exhausting meeting. There 
had been so many reams of figures; calculations in- 
numerable; recitation; and behind all the invincible 
vitality to buoy, to inspire, those who had sat around 
the table. I had never seen Mandrill tired in this way 
before. 

But as I had come into the room from my own, 
obedient to his call, the figure had tautened itself, 
379 


380 


PASSION 


expanded as though drawing new vitality from my 
coming. It was a change to which I had grown ac- 
customed — the change that always came over Man- 
drill when someone stood before him, the change 
dominating. 

He began quietly. ‘It’s been a big day, Tempest 
— a big day. We have done much, talked much, 
but there is still much to do and to talk about before 
we go to bed. There is no time to lose now. Time 
is the essence of this contract as of so many others. 
Already the battle has begun and the wires are at 
work throughout the world. There will be no rest 
to-night for many men, both here and over there, 
where the sun will still be shining whilst we are locked 
in sleep. 

“There is the Shout Department — that needs some 
finishing touches — and those last instructions to De- 
benham to-morrow before the Exchange opens — and 
half a dozen other things. No rest to-night.” 

And it was a late night. As hour after hour lagged 
and the chimes of the city broke out one by one and 
died away, the table before us gradually filled with 
papers, and more papers. Midnight had come and the 
clock of the Royal Exchange had struck out “the Old 
Hundredth,” heavy, uncertain. The silence was in- 
tense in that fog through which the chimes muffled 
themselves. But through it all there seemed to come 
to me the tink-tink of the man on the scaffold. I 
would hear it — “Tink-tink — tink-tink;” and then find 
it was the jingle of a distant hansom, or the chime of 
a bell. It would come to me at the most awkward 
moments — it tinkled through the prospectuses — across 
the calculations; punctuated the names as they fell 
from Mandrill’s lips. And with it, incongruous, came 


THE HIGH MOUNTAIN 


381 


the face of the red-haired girl — the girl who had jeered 
at the man on the scaffold, had sneered at democracy. 
And these two things stayed with me through the in- 
terminable hours — the tink-tink of the hammer and the 
face of the girl, smiling, ironic. 

Mandrill’s voice sounded so far away. Big Busi- 
ness seemed so far away. It was as though I were 
sitting alone in the room. Mandrill once or twice 
had looked at me curiously and had rallied me upon 
my inattention. It was not my way to be inattentive. 

Names tumbled and jostled one another, wires 
hissed under their messages, schemes unrolled them- 
selves — under the magic of this man who sat by my 
side. He had spread the whole world before me as a 
chart, with our spheres of influence mapped out in 
red — but through it all the hair of tawn tangled itself, 
muddling the names, blurring the figures — and through 
it came the tink-tink of the hammer. 

I would shake myself out of my stupor and con- 
centrate anew on the work before me — I would bend 
myself to the task until my eyes goggled . . . but al- 
ways there came the film of hair, the smile ironic, and 
the man on the scaffold. And now I could hear it 
plainly out there in the fog. But who could be work- 
ing out there at midnight and in that thickness ? 

“What’s the matter?” asked Mandrill at last, stop- 
ping in what he was saying. “What’s the matter, 
Tempest — are you ill?” 

“Can’t you hear it?” I asked. 

“Hear what?” 

“The man on the scaffold.” 

Mandrill looked at me as though there was some- 
thing seriously the matter with me. 


382 


PASSION 


“You’re dreaming,” he said. “ The man on the 
scaffold/ What are you talking about?” 

“The man who was working on the front of the 
house to-day. I have heard the tink-tink of his ham- 
mer and pick the whole day. I hear it now. And 
you have been speaking about him.” 

“Speaking about him — about whom?” And now 
the man at my side looked at me as though he believed 
I were out of my mind. 

“It was when Vogel asked ‘What then?’ after you 
had spoken of smashing Squid. You remember. You 
spoke of the last enemy you would have to fight — you 
or Big Business. ... It is the same thing. The 
Democracy. The man on the scaffold.” 

“Well, and we shall fight him and beat him,” he 
said. 

“But supposing he beats you?” I had risen and 
was standing before the embers of the dying fire. And 
now it was as though voices were speaking to me, 
prompting me. Questions were asking themselves in 
my mind, which was high-tensioned, vibrant, as the 
mind sometimes is in the small hours of the morning, 
with a dawning vision in which things showed them- 
selves plain. 

“What is coming over you, Tempest?” And now 
he too had risen and was standing before the fire, 
relaxed but combative, as though he felt what was 
coming. “You talk like the man in ‘High Finance/ ” 

“Do I?” I said, indifferently. “Perhaps I do. I 
wrote ‘High Finance/ ” 

“You!” The man before me had galvanised into 
life and had sprung forward, his mouth open, as he 
bellowed the word that hung there in the yeasty silence. 
“You!” 


THE HIGH MOUNTAIN 


383 


And then Mandrill had done something I had never 
seen him do before. He had recoiled and his face had 
paled. It was as though he had seen a ghost. 

“You” And now the voice was still and far 
away. . . . 

“In my own house. My own man — my right-hand 
man. The man who brought me luck. The man I 
nearly loved.” He looked above and over my shoulder 
as though he saw something. 

Then the spirit of the man, invincible, had come 
back. He had straightened himself, set himself four- 
square to me as though he would, must, annihilate me. 

“What are you, Tempest — a friend — an enemy?” 

And then I saw in that strange grey light that had 
fallen upon all things that I had come to the parting 
of the ways. I had reached this point by the track, 
devious, which stretched itself away from me. I had 
reached the place appointed, the time appointed, across 
the work, the passion of my life, when I had to choose 
this day whom I would serve. What I did now, I 
knew, beyond possibility of equivocation, would decide 
all my future — felt, darkly, as the face of the girl 
came to me, would decide something else, something 
which made my heart beat, terrified. I must choose. 

But to the man before me I said: “I don’t know.” 

“You must know — you shall know.” 

“I wrote ‘High Finance’ not to attack you ; not be- 
cause I stood against Big Business or for the Democ- 
racy which you say will yet fight it ; but because I had 
to make things clear to myself — because I had a pas- 
sion to know , to express. I wanted an answer to my 
own questions. And I wanted to write. I had to 
write. You know there is such a thing as writing, as 
art.” 


384 


PASSION 


“No man can serve two masters, Tempest.” The 
big voice came quiet, resonant. 

And now he had erupted again, volcanic. “You 
are playing with issues bigger than you, bigger than 
me,” he said. “You are a child playing with the world. 
You cannot put this thing off. This is not a question 
of private conscience — of feeling — of what you will. 
This is vital, fundamental. You must choose. No 
man can have two passions in his life. Power cannot 
share its throne with Art. Power demands all. 

“You either stand for Big Business or you don't. 
You either accept the facts of life as they are or shelter 
yourself behind the petticoats of sentiment. 

“For how can we talk of peace where there is no 
peace — how can we speak of sacrifice where the only 
sacrifice is the sacrifice of annihilation. You either 
realise the Law of Combination, of Battle, as I have 
outlined it to you, or you do not — a brute law if you 
like, a brute struggle — but the price of evolution. . . ” 

He had broken off, and then, almost wistfully, sad- 
ly: “I could think, Tempest, that Democracy alone can 
save the world as the man in ‘High Finance' said . . .” 
his voice had risen, dogmatic, again — “but nothing 
can save the world — the world can only be saved by 
itself, by struggle with itself — by Big Business if you 
will, for the commercial struggle is the struggle that 
lies behind all struggles. Behind the diplomatic strug- 
gle lies the struggle of Big Business, as it lies behind 
the things for which diplomacy is the mask — the bullet 
and bayonet, those engines of death which are its final 
expression. And this commercial struggle is no longer 
national, but international, not only between firm and 
firm, but between country and country, group and 
group, Trust and Trust — but it is a struggle that will 


THE HIGH MOUNTAIN 


385 

go on until we see the final battle, Armageddon, be- 
tween the Last Trust and the Democracy. . . . And 
yet that will not be the end. 

“The struggle in the world will not end with the 
battle for the control of the White World any more 
than it will end with our mastery of copper and of the 
white world. There are struggles, greater, vaster 
struggles to come which show themselves upon the 
horizons of time. After the struggle to master the 
race, our race, there comes the struggle between the 
races to master the world, the struggle between White 
and Yellow — in the beginning a commercial struggle, 
the struggle of Big Business; in the end a struggle of 
steel and powder ... a world in chaos, in torment, 
a world of rapine and murder and sudden death — a 
world struggle that will be of the markets, and of the 
markets for life, and of life for immortality, which 
men to-day call ‘a place in the sun/ x\nd beyond and 
above, other, greater struggles between planet and 
planet, system and system, god and god. . . He 

stood up, gigantic, expansive, with new lights in his 
eyes like a prophet of the coming time: it was Evolu- 
tion — from the Ape to Man. 

And now his voice had sunk, pleading, low, hoarse. 
“But, Tempest, you will not desert me now in the face 
of these tremendous issues ; you will stand side by side 
with me in the struggle, to share, if you will, the heir- 
ship of the world . . . for, Tempest, I can take you 
up into a high mountain and show you all the king- 
doms of the world and the glory of them and make 
them your playthings and mine. I can and will, be- 
cause you are close to me, a man after my own heart, 
make you my heir, leave you after I am gone to carry 
on the eternal law of struggle— do more, leave you 


386 


PASSION 


to develop what you once called the philosophy of the 
brute — the philosophy of gold — to teach the world a 
new philosophy. It has had the philosophy of renun- 
ciation — now it shall have, if you will, the philosophy 
of acquirement, of battle, of power. . . 

As he spoke, new lights were breaking in on me, 
my mind working smoothly and anxiously was no 
longer blinded: answer after answer came to me, and 
I thought I understood the man on the scaffold, Big 
Business, everything but the girl with the hair of tawn 
that floated across my eyes and tangled my brain in a 
skein, unravelled. 

But I had to choose. He had said it. He was right. 
I had to choose between the passion of power and the 
passion of art. 

Then I chose, and knew in that moment that I had 
chosen long before. I chose and as I chose I told him 
of my choice. I told him the story of my life, the 
story of that thing which had run through my life, 
the story of the Cave and of enlightenment. I told 
him the story of my writing, and I told him, as now 
I knew, that Art and Big Business were two things — 
that Art and Big Business were enemies to the end. 

‘Tor,” and I said it to him gently, for I liked this 
man, “you and I are enemies — always enemies — ene- 
mies to the end of time. There can be no peace, no 
truce between us, as you have said. The day I entered 
the Cave I felt that one day you and I would have 
to fight each other — and now it has come, for we two 
are enemies, enemies to the death, enemies eternal. 
And yet, I am your friend.” 

I put out my hand. But the big man had sunk back 
into his chair, resting his head in one hand where the 
dying fire threw its shadows upon it. 


THE HIGH MOUNTAIN 


387 


And as I went slowly out of the room I turned at 
the door for a moment, and he was looking after me, 
above me, beyond me, as though the thing he had seen 
was standing there. And the mouth, the great mouth, 
had moved — surely it was on one side . 


XXXVIII 


THE WOMAN 

I stole back to Fear Street like a thief out of the 
night in the dawn that yellowed itself through the fog. 
Nothing was left of the clarity that had come to me 
as Mandrill had spoken. I also was a combative ani- 
mal — with the resistance taken away my vitality had 
gone out of me — without the passion of struggle to 
brace me, I was nothing. Perhaps Mandrill was right. 
Struggle was life. 

I had walked home through the silences of the 
streets. The fog, shutting down closer than ever, 
wrapped its clammy fingers about me, took the courage 
from my heart, and the voices with which it was preg- 
nant whispered to me to make me afraid. That morn- 
ing I was to learn, as I had learnt in the past in Fear 
Street, that fear was the only hell. 

But it was not too late. Mandrill would welcome 
me back with open arms and would kill the fatted 
calf for me. I could still choose between power and 
comfort and assurance — and the uncertainty, the mis- 
ery, of free-lance journalism upon which as I knew 
from others I might earn a pound a week — if I were 
lucky, or I might earn nothing. My spare capital was 
locked up in Mandrill's final coup. Book-writing did 
not pay at the beginning I had discovered from “High 
Finance." After all it was something to have a place 
388 


THE WOMAN 


389 


assured amongst men. . . . And Mandrill was again 
spinning his story of power into my ears — and there 
came the cries and tumult from the distant battle, and 
adventure galled to me from the deeps of finance. 

So I sat through the day in my rooms. The char- 
woman who had taken the place of Mrs. McWhirter 
had not come ; there was no coal, and the fire had died 
down. I sat there through the day, now trying to 
work, now walking up and down trying to decide — 
now making a run for my hat to go back to the City 
and tell Mandrill I had made a fool of myself. 

And now the tink-tink of the hammer no longer 
came to me out of the fog, the girl with the red hair ' 
seemed very far away, and the greyness was settling 
down in deeper shadow as the afternoon drew on, 
for in no other way could one tell that there had 
been daylight in that blanketing. Once a hurdy- 
gurdy droned through the fog, but otherwise the 
streets had been soundless. All life was stilled under 
that icy pall. 

I had eaten and drunken ravenously of some cold 
stuff, that was left over from the day before and now 
I was hungry again. Once I got up to buy something, 
but the yellow lights stealing from under the doors 
and the glimmer of the gas-jets which showed that 
night had come to Fear Street, drove me back again. 

And once there came a cry out of the night — and 
that sent my mind back, back. They say that drown- 
ing men see all their lives behind them. I was drown- 
ing and I saw mine. My mind stole back, back, and 
again I was sitting in my little room hearing the cries 
from below; again I was sleeping on the horsehair 
sofa in Miss Ella’s room, sitting with her under the 
high lights of the Grand Mogul — and now I was 


390 


PASSION 


walking again the silent stretches of the Euston Road 
and wandering under the white suns of Piccadilly. 
And Mauri grinned at the thing on the floor, and 
Mrs. McWhirter, the two heavy plaits framing her 
face, came and went; and Mr. Clarence was singing, 
singing. . . . 

And he was singing. The voice came to me where 
I sat, my face sunk between my hands. He was 
leading a hymn in his high sweet tenor, and then a 
woman joined in and there came the ripple of the 
children’s voices — but all so far away. . . • 

“Jesus, Lover of my soul; 

Let me to thy bosom fly; 

While the nearer waters roll. ...” 

I could not hear the words, but I followed them with 
the tune, and with it .Christ looked at me out of the 
mist on Olivet and the girl with the golden hair and 
the pencilled eyebrows smiled down at me. And now 
I was telling the Cedars what I thought of them and 
my uncle looked in, his face grey and drawn, mourn- 
ful, only now he did not look the humbug. . . . 

And now the ghosts Of the past thronged in upon 
me . . . the dear dead ghosts. Little Sheilah in her 
black silk stockings and white dress smiled at me 
from the edge of the sunlit wood, and receded. And 
now I was rushing along the steel ways into this Lon- 
don that swallowed me. And there was Mandrill, a 
great, gaunt figure, and little Madame Angelica by his 
side bobbing and smiling in her flowered silk, and the 
thing of running water, of damp earth and moonlight 
touched the whole with the pale fires of passion. And 
the Girl in the Window was smiling to me through the 


THE WOMAN 


391 


veil of her hair and I saw she was the red-haired girl. 
And the uric-acid girl was looking at me — and I was 
back amongst the lilacs and the dragon-flowers and 
was biting my grandmother’s hand. 

They came, the pale dear ghosts of the past. They 
looked at me and smiled and gibbered and mocked. 
And I saw that they were fate — and that no man 
could fight against fate. . . . 

And my fate was Mandrill and the Cave and Big 
Business. Who was I that I should set myself up 
in the face of the world — how could I fight the 
world? . . . fate ... all was fate. . . . 

And as my head sunk deeper in my hands and the 
grey shadows twined themselves ever closer about me, 
I felt that there was something in the room with me. 
An icy wind blew in from the corridor. It was as 
though a ghost had entered. 

It seemed a ghost that stood there in the greyness, 
the eyes, or where the eyes should have been, misty, 
looking down on me like the girl in the window . . . 
and then it spoke. . . . 

“I have been listening to you all day as I passed 
your door walking up and down and then I heard 
nothing and thought that something might be the 
matter . . . that you might be ill — sick. . . .” She 
spoke hesitatingly. She had never before come down 
to my rooms. 

“I am sick,” I said. "Sick unto death. Something 
that you can’t cure.” 

“Are you sure?” she asked gently. The gentleness 
of her voice made me wonder. 

Then I could feel that nervous tremor run through 
her — felt that her poise hardened. And she had asked 
me, indifferently, “What is the matter?” 


392 


PASSION 


Her indifference stung me. I was a self-lover. It 
seemed to me that I hung there crucified whilst she 
looked on. I also “could not come down from my 
cross. I didn't know the way.” It stung me into 
indignant despair. It was that day again when she 
had refused to let me speak, only more silent, re- 
strained. 

And so I told her the story of the night, of my talk 
with Mandrill. And as I spoke there came hardness 
to me. I too was expansive. And again I saw 
jclearly. I knew the way I would take. I knew in 
that moment that although I had lost this girl — al- 
though I had lost position and money and power, that 
nothing again would bring me back to Big Business. 

As I crouched there I told her my story, colourless, 
factful. I told her of my decision and then in the 
act of telling gave to her the story of the passion of 
my life. Brought to her also those dear dead ghosts 
of the past that had visited me. Told her despairingly, 
as under the pressure of something invisible, of all 
things — of the uric-acid woman, of little Sheilah, of 
the thing of running water and damp earth — of those 
early days in London and my loneliness and Madame 
Angelica and Miss Ella. 

“I have chosen,” I said, “but I can go back if I 
wish ... I can go back if I wish . . . but if I go 
back to the Cave I go back also to those old passions, 
to that thing of damp earth. I know them for what 
they are — you have helped me to that — but yet they 
are waiting . . . and that other thing is waiting to 
embrace me — to drag me down if you will. Perhaps 
this is the damp earth . . . but the moonlight, aye, 
the moonlight ... I saw that once also. But the 
fog shut down on it. . . .” 


THE WOMAN 


393 


My head went down again into my hands. She 
stood looking out there into the heart of the fog, her 
hands clasped loosely behind her. She had stood like 
that as I told my story, indifferent — detached, as 
though she were listening to something that did not 
concern her — as indeed it did not. 

I wanted to be alone. I wanted this girl with the 
smouldering, tormenting eyes and the tousled hair to 
go away from me and leave me to my misery and 
perhaps to those things that waited. And then as I 
felt that she too had deserted me, that all was finished, 
and I was once more alone, alone as I had never been, 
something had come down to my feet, two slender 
arms, soft and warm, were about my neck, and I 
felt the soft face pressed to mine and the kiss of the 
tumultuous hair. 

I held myself as a man in a dream, close, afraid to 
break the spell, doubting, fearing . . . and then as 
I felt something warm trickle down my cheeks I 
knew that the passions of my life had run their course 
into the full stream of love, of friendship fulfilled. 
The moonlight was shining clear through that thing 
of earth. 


XXXIX 


THE CHILD 

Nearly a year had gone — a year of surprises, dis- 
appointments. But a year of fulfillment, of happiness. 
A year of realisation, of creation — now about to be 
crowned with a new life, for we had been married 
soon after that January night. 

And now the veils had fallen from the eyes of my 
dear one as from her words, and I knew their mes- 
sage, knew on which side she stood in the life-battle, 
and knew that my choice in the Cave that night of 
fog had given her to me — that she had been waiting 
for that moment, waiting for me to find myself, and 
her. 

And with the finding there had come other things. 
The wherewithal to live, the beginnings of recogni- 
tion. My book had done more than I had known, 
reached ears unsuspected, carried a message to the 
people who were creating themselves out there at the 
beginning of the twentieth century — the Children of 
the New Age. 

The autumn had come again, and the old year was 
dying in a golden glory of russet and brown. For 
there had been death as well as creation. The news- 
papers were full of the great crash — the crash that 
was shaking the commercial world to its foundations 
and which has now become historic. 

Everyone was in it. Big Business and little busi- 
394 


THE CHILD 


395 


ness were buried in a common grave. In this de- 
mocracy of death the Whyburns went down with 
the Craggses — the Skinsoles with the Nathans — the 
Vogels with the little investor — the bird of prey with 
the thing upon which it preyed. The Stock Exchanges 
of two hemispheres roared and thundered as the 
whirlpools of finance scoured them day in and day 
out, and in the sucking of the whirlpools the copper 
stocks of the world were engulfed and with them 
went the frightened, angry little people, bubbling up 
and down upon the flood. 

Squid had bid higher in the battle of life and of 
Big Business — had gone deeper. The sucker had 
done his work. 

For in the battle of the deeps, Mandrill had been 
out-reached, out-mastered, out-cunninged. The brain 
that lurked out there in the underworlds of finance 
had suborned and perjured and bought out — had 
suborned Mandrill’s press, bought up Mandrill’s 
nominees — it had mined and countermined — twisted 
and turned and tracked — had snared the world with 
its nets. But above all it had bought, bought without 
ceasing — had flung the deadweight of gold into the 
scales of fate: had bludgeoned and beaten its ad- 
versary with the heaviest weapon in the world — the 
weapon of the Bank Balance. 

And as the Cave fell about his ears, other things 
fell with it. One by one the M. Ps. who had voiced 
the claims of Big Business and had stood up for the 
man behind it, deserted him — not dishonestly, not un- 
fairly, but it seemed this Big Business of his had not 
been “legitimate business.” The captains of finance 
looked askance — not “legitimate” business. His press 
turned against him — not legitimate. And now the 


396 PASSION 

law had set its heavy hand upon his shoulder — 
“illegitimate.” 

It was a case of misstatements, a bad case, a 
widows’ and orphans’ case, with self-murder stalking 
through the land, leaving his bloody trail. But this 
was not national, it was international. Men and 
women numberless, unknown, cursed Mandrill in 
every tongue known and unknown. The red trail 
strewed itself across the Continent of Europe. 

But the curses had run together into a red stream of 
vengeance. The cry for a victim raised itself wher- 
ever men could speak. It raised itself in the grey 
colourless murmur of the streets; in the cold accusing 
black and white of the printed word; sounded in 
clarion-crimson from the sounding boards of Par- 
liament; screamed itself out in the red murk of the 
Fear Streets and the back blocks; and with it was 
mingled the wail of the fatherless, the crying of the 
innocents of the world. All were in it . . . even I. 

“Even I.” For as I entered the court to give my 
evidence for which I had been subpoenaed that October 
morning, he had turned his eyes on me, silent, re- 
proachful, and the lips had formed the words. . . . 
“Even you !” 

He looked as he had looked that night of fog — 
as though he saw a ghost, with the twitch that had 
spread itself from the scalp to the big mouth. He 
knew from the beginning he had no chance. He read 
it in the judge’s eyes, in the eyes of the jurymen — 
saw it in the faces about him. He was about to find 
out that the law holds its supreme punishments for 
the unsuccessful. They would have no mercy on him. 
He was unsuccessful. Non-success — he himself had 
said it — spelt annihilation. 


THE CHILD 397 

But this man asked no mercy. It was all in the 
Game. 

He looked his fate in the face, courageous, unflinch- 
ing. I could see it, and as I saw my heart went out 
to him. For I had nearly loved him — this man. And 
he had loved me. 

They had all come to see him die. Little Madame 
Angelica was there to give evidence, but in custody. 
For the Dragon House scandal was just beginning to 
unfold the unnatural, slimy lengths which were to 
stretch under the unravelment of the detectives of 
two continents throughout the cities of the Old and 
New Worlds. 

The little woman in the poke bonnet sat there be- 
tween the two plain-clothes men, gripping eagerly, 
hungrily, at her reticule with those terrible hands. 
And somewhere behind in the bank of faces which 
stared down at the man in the dock, there came and 
went that of a white-faced, blousy man with hanging 
cheeks — and I could have sworn it was Hawkling, 
only that when I looked again it had disappeared. 
And there were others. 

The Jackal peered red-eyed at the man behind the 
rail. Mr. Crosbill held himself in a top gallery, 
solemn as ever, and Old Pippin, looking as he had 
looked any day ten years, smiled to himself in secret. 
They were all there except Smeeter. But Smeeter 
could not be there. 

Men still speak of the Copper Man as he stood 
there that day of autumn, gripping the iron before 
him with his great hands as though it had been paper ; 
the figure, dauntless, even in decay, straddling the 
pigmies about him as he made his last speech before 
sentence was passed. 


398 


PASSION 


Remorseless, logical, he indicted that Society which 
had condemned him. He showed that he alone had 
been logical in the application of its laws — the laws 
which were to send him to a living death. And I was 
back again in the Den as he spread before them the 
story of Big Business, of Gold, of Power, speaking 
his philosophy as he had spoken it to me. And as he 
spoke the great mouth twitched with that uneasy 
tremor. 

“Battle,” he said, “Battle,” and again “Battle.” 
The word punctuated his utterance, coming again and 
again like the boom of a gun. . . . 

“I have played the game, the Game of Big Business, 
and lost . . . but the Game goes on. Squid has won, 
and I have lost . . . but the Game goes on. I pass, 
but the gamesters come . . . the Game goes on. We 
are all in it, this Game of Life where the fight is to 
the strong — to the man with the bank balance — the 
game that men call Big Business. For this is the 
game behind all other games — behind the Game of 
White Empire which is played with the bullets and 
bayonets — behind the rising of empire under the stars 
of the east — the Game of Big Business — and with it 
the tottering of thrones and the Yellow Challenge 
. . . and this also, this thing here, is also the Game, 
for the Game goes on . . .” and again that nervous 
twitching came to him, the scalp, the mouth. . . . 

“The Game goes on. . . .” The voice boomed it- 
self once more across the crowded court where the 
shadows drew steadily down . . . “the Game goes 
on. . . .” 

He tautened a moment, that tremor had run across 
the side of his face as he half turned . . . and then 
he had crashed downwards, the face of a mask, the 


THE CHILD 399 

mouth twisted, stricken by that thing that had stricken 
my father. . . . 


As I went up the stairs of the Fear Street house, 
something came to me, something petering, insistent, 
complaining — weakly passionate. I opened the door 
of the outer room, but it was empty. Only now the 
cry had grown strong, piercing, overwhelming. And 
then I knew. It was the child. 

I stood there looking out of the window, stood 
there deep in the intestines of the monster that wound 
itself about me, hearing the gurgle and murmur as it 
functioned . . . but out and through and beyond it 
there came that cry, insistent, triumphant — and with 
it was the face of the woman. 

And now there came the cries of Fear Street, and 
from the world outside, beyond, the clash and struggle 
of Big Business following the law of combination and 
battle; the suck of the whirlpool; the cries of greed 
and of vengeance; the wear and tear on the arteries 
of this London, of the world . . . but through it all 
came the cry of the child and the face of the woman. 

And now the diapason of the streets, of the world, 
which came to my ears like the rumble of some great 
organ, was rising — and now it was a rushing and a 
whirl, a sucking and a choke, and it spread itself 
about me, surrounded me, the scour of this thing, 
until it merged into the murmur of waters, into one 
thunderous torrent. But something was breaking 
through it like the pulsing of waves upon a rocky 
shore . . . the beat — beat of it came to my ears . . . 
and then it was the beat — beat of a drum — a distant 
drum that came beating out over the rooftops, reach- 


400 


PASSION 


in g down to me . . . impinging upon my conscious- 
ness, the consciousness of the nervous Twentieth 
Century, just dawning, and as I listened I could hear 
something insistent that shuffled under the drum, 
something that pattered itself out on the streets — the 
sound of footsteps, the pad — pad of the generations 
yet unborn hurrying to life down the great white ways 
of time . . . and always the cry of the child and the 
face of the woman. 

And as I listened to the Passion of the Hours and 
to the mighty congregation that hurried towards it, 
I knew that there was no death, and that this passion- 
play was the Passion-play eternal — knew that the age, 
this nervous, passionate age, held leashed in its heart 
unknown potentialities — that this rotten, imaginative, 
wonderful age was the age of the Big Idea as well as 
of Big Business — an age of struggle and despair, of 
defeats and victories . . . but an age reaching for- 
ward through the passion of men like to myself, 
through that passion of love fulfilled, to splendours 
yet unborn ; to human beings who shall be as gods. . . . 

And through it all the face of the woman and the 
cry of the child came to me — that insistent, pulsating, 
whelming cry — the cry of passion, and of life. 





















































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